Question

I am trying to do pretty much the same, as is for example on Sourceforge. After a user creates some data, I generate a file and I want it to be offered to him after a page load. However, I know almost nothing about javascript and simple copy-paste of

<script type="text/javascript">
    var download_url = "http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/itextsharp/itextsharp-4.1.2-dll.zip?use_mirror=dfn";

    function downloadURL() {
        if (download_url.length != 0 && !jQuery.browser.msie) {
            window.location.href = download_url;
        }
    }

    jQuery(window).load(downloadURL);

</script>

is not enough. It is important for the user to download the file, so how to do that?

A question related to the previous is – where to store the file i created? Once while using the asp.net development server and then on the real IIS server? And how should this address look? When I tried

setTimeout("window.location.href='file://localhost/C:/Downloads/file.pdf'", 2000);

I was getting nothing, with HTTP an error of unknown address.

Answer 1

See Haack’s DownloadResult example. It explains (I think) exactly what you’re truing to do. Except you would provide the timeout call with your download action url.