Question

I have a form that posts to a url which triggers file download. The server is ASP.NET MVC and I write out a CSV file.

What I want to do is have a jQuery/javascript submit the form instead of a form submit button.

For example, I created a link and attached a handler using jQuery to submit the form:

$(function() {
    $("#mylink").click(function() {
        $("form").submit();
        return false;
    });
});

I also tried serializing the form and doing an ajax post with same result.

What I get is that the request/response happens as should, but I do not get the file download (save file) dialog. I can verify the response by using fiddler for example.

It’s as if the response is happening out of band or something, in a parallel thread if you will, there is no one at the door.

Can someone shed a light?
Thanks

UPDATE
For some reason, $("form").submit() does not work but I can do my validation and pre-processing, then return true, which works.

Answer 1

If you call the submit method on a form, then that is exactly the same as clicking a normal submit button.

Using XHR would fail (since the file would be handled by XHR instead of the normal browser response handler), but .submit() should work.

It sounds like you just aren’t setting the content-disposition header to cause the browser to treat the data as an attachment instead of an inline document.