Question

I have a textarea that accepts a bunch of data. I then submit it via $.ajax to a PHP script that processes it and generates a KML.

var pData = $("textarea#data").serialize();
$.ajax(
{
    type: "POST",
    url: "tools.php?mode=process",
    data: pData,
    success: function(data)
    {
        window.location.href = "tools.php?mode=download&"+pData;
    });
});

This did work fine, until I started getting more and more data. Now I get a URI Too Large error, and am trying to find an alternative to force a file download. I tried using $.post() as well, but I can’t force it to download.

Answer 1

Following up the discussion in the comments, the optimal workflow for this might be

1. data gets sent to mode=process through Ajax and POST;
2. script saves result in a temporary file (with a random name) and returns the name of that file in the AJAX response body
3. location.href call goes to mode=download and the name of the temporary file
4. script opens temporary file, passes it through and deletes it