Question

I am developing a web app that in some moment the user requests something for the server (servlet) and the server should return a csv file to the user. I need at this point a dialog box appears to the user, giving you the option to specify the directory where you want to save the csv file.

In Servlet I have:

    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {

        response.setContentType("application/csv");
        response.setHeader("content-disposition","filename=test.csv"); // set the file name to whatever required..
        PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
        out.println("a,b,c,d,e,f");
        out.println("1,2,3,4,5,6");
        out.flush();
        out.close();
}

In javascript I have:

            $.get('URL_SERVLET' , function(data) {
            alert("ret: " + data);
        });

How is the next step?

EDIT:

I got a good result using the simple following command:

<a href='http://localhost:8080/MY_SERVLET'> link here </ a>

Clicking on the link, the file test.csv is automatically downloaded

To Answer my need, I need that “href” content was dynamic and was fired by the click of a button.

example:

User select radio component with name “radio 1” and clicked the button “Export csv”, this time the url would be built dynamically, example: “http://localhost:8080/MY_SERVLET/csv1” and the file would be downloaded automatically (equal what happens on the link above that contains the text “link here”)

Is possible?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can’t trigger the save-as dialog with ajax. You should simply navigate the browser to the download url. It will detect the proper headers and will show the save-as dialog.