Request download file javascript

A few days ago, I had a new requirement. Instead of individual files, I needed to download a zip file containing hundreds of reports. The first solution came into my mind is:. The final solution I came up with is: download all the files to the browser and zip them there. In this post, I will work through how I do it. Before applying new solutions, my system allows downloading a single report file.

There are many ways to do that. I choose the 2nd approach since I want to cache all the generated files. The browser will do the rest to download the file. Another way to handle this is by using fetch to download files and store data as Blob in memory. We can then write it to file or combine those blob data into a zip file. In this article, we will learn how to download files using JavaScript. Automatic downloading files help us retrieve files directly from the URL with a JavaScript function without contacting any servers.

We will achieve this using our custom written functions and using the download attribute of HTML 5. The download attribute in HTML 5 is used to download files when users click on the hyperlink.

We are required to set the href attribute specifying the source of the file. The value of the download attribute determines the name of the downloaded file. This requires a little intermediate knowledge of the JavaScript to work and in this example a Axios library will be used. Skip to content.

Change Language. Related Articles. Table of Contents. Save Article. Improve Article. Like Article. The declared function sets a download attribute where you get to name the file. The encodeURIComponent function then encodes the content. The click method prompts the download process to start as you click the download button. There is another option for downloading files without contacting the server. This time, we are using a JavaScript library called FileSaver.

The example below presents the syntax to implement the saveAs FileSaver interface:. It sets the file to a Blob value. For instance, it is useful for preventing sensitive information from being sent to external servers. It includes but is not limited to multimedia objects , programs , and code snippets. Remember: as Blob has size limitations based on the supported browser, FileSaver.

See the table below to check the compatibility of FileSaver. Learn easily by using our HTML5 canvas examples.