Question

I’d like to make an XML document in JavaScript then have a save dialog appear.

1. It’s OK if they have to click before the save can occur.
2. It’s *not* OK if I *have* to use IE to achieve this (I don’t even need to support it at all). However, Windows is a required platform (so Firefox or Chrome are the preferred browsers if I can only do this in one browser).
3. It’s *not* OK if I need a web server. But conversely, I don’t want to require the JavaScript to be run on a local file only, i.e. elevated privileges — if possible. That is, I’d like to to run locally or on a *static* host. But just locally is OK.
4. It’s OK to have to bend over backwards to do this. The file won’t be very big, but internet access might either be there, be spotty or just not be a possibility at all — see (3).

So far the only ideas I have seen are to save the XML to an iframe and save that document — but it seems that you can only do this in IE? Also, that I could construct a data URI and place that in a link. My fear here is that it will just open the XML file in the window, rather than prompt the user to save it.

I know that if I require the JavaScript to be local, I can raise privileges and just directly save the file (or hopefully cause a save dialog box to appear). However, I’d much prefer a solution where I do not require raised privileges (even a Firefox 3.6 only solution).

I apologize if this offends anyone’s sensibilities (for example, not supporting every browser). I basically want to write an offline application and Javascript/HTML/CSS seem to be the best candidate considering the complexity of the requirements and the time available. However, I have this single requirement of being able to save data that must be overcome before I can choose this line of development.

Answer 1

How about this downloadify script?

Which is based on Flash and jQuery, which can prompt you dialog box to save file in your computer.

Downloadify.create('downloadify',{
  filename: function(){
    return document.getElementById('filename').value;
  },
  data: function(){ 
    return document.getElementById('data').value;
  },
  onComplete: function(){ 
    alert('Your File Has Been Saved!'); 
  },
  onCancel: function(){ 
    alert('You have cancelled the saving of this file.');
  },
  onError: function(){ 
    alert('You must put something in the File Contents or there will be nothing to save!'); 
  },
  swf: 'media/downloadify.swf',
  downloadImage: 'images/download.png',
  width: 100,
  height: 30,
  transparent: true,
  append: false
});