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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T22:38:58+00:00

I have a controller (Spring-MVC) that generates a PDF report on a get request.

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I have a controller (Spring-MVC) that generates a PDF report on a get request. The controller sets headers like “application/OCTET-STREAM”, “Content-Disposition”, “attachment; filename=\”” + filename + “\”” so that the user gets the save/open dialog forced to them. The controller gets a pdf generated and writes the pdf bytes directly to the response’s output stream. The ModelAndView that is returned is null.

The issue is I need/want to disable the button that generates the report request after it is clicked and then re-enable it when the report is finished in order to prevent double clicking.

I thought I could use prototype.org’s Ajax.Request to do this… This bit of code does work the buttons properly but then I’m stuck because the client never gets the pdf. I’m guessing I need to do something with the response but I don’t know what. Any ideas/help is appreciated.

function displayPdf(button_b, pdf_url) {
   button_b.disabled = true;
   new Ajax.Request(pdf_url, {
       asynchronous:true,
       evalScripts:true,
       method:'get',
       onComplete: function(response) {
         button_b.disabled = false;
      },
      onFailure: function() {
          redAlert('crap');
     }
   });
}
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The best way I can think to accomplish everything that you want, assuming that you’re still forcing a download would to be something like this I think:

    <html>
<head>
    <script>
        function get_it() {
            document.getElementById('the_button').disabled = true;
            document.getElementById('the_frame').src = "http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/063575p.pdf";
        }
        function enable_button() {
            document.getElementById('the_button').disabled = false; 
        }
    </script>
</head>
<body>
    <iframe id='the_frame' onload='enable_button()'></iframe>
    <button id='the_button' onclick='get_it()'>Get it</button>
</body>
</html>

    Basically, you’re telling it to send it to the iframe instead of using an AJAX request. Once the pdf is ready, the iframe’s onload event will fire, re-enabling the button. You’ll probably want to use actual event listeners for this as opposed to the deprecated inline ones that I’ve used in the example 😛

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