Question

I have an application in turbogears that dynamically generates an excel spreadsheet, meaning it is not saved as a file in the server, I set the content type and other headers, so it works fine, my question is if it is possible to trigger a download using jquery. Here is what it looks like:

def get_xl(self, **search):
    response.headers['Content-type'] = "application/ms-excel"
    response.headers['Content-Disposition'] = "attachment;filename=myfile.xls"
    book = Workbook()
    ... code that puts stuff in rows ...
    return book.biff_data()

This returns the data so when I go to the url on my browser, it triggers the download, however, I need to post some data,and it would be nice if everything can be handled with jquery. This is what I have so far on jquery side, I know is all wrong though:

var fields = $('#search-form').serializeObject();
    if ( !fields.length ) {
        alert("Dude, you must search for something.");
        return false;
    }
$.get('/get_xl',fields.data);

Answer 1

Instead of using jQuery for this, try changing the get_xl method to accept query string parameters, and then just setting the URL to /get_xl?params_here using plain ol’ javascript – this will trigger the Save / Run download dialog in the browser.

e.g.

var fields = $.param('#search-form');
    if ( !fields.length ) {
        alert("Dude, you must search for something.");
        return false;
    }

window.location.href = '/get_xl?' + fields;