Question

I’m using AJAX to submit a POST request to my Rails controller

$("#submit_form").submit(function(event) {
  ...
  /* Send the data using post*/
    $.post( "/download", { s: term },
      function( data ) {}
    );
});

The controller returns a file using the Rails send_file method. However, when I click on the form button, no file is downloaded to me, even though the response header says

Content-Disposition:attachment; filename="pic.jpg"

How can I get the file?

Answer 1

It’s AFAIK not possible to let users download files using AJAX requests and I see no reason to do it that way, since the user will remain on the page when downloading a file.

For a file to be downloaded, the response must be handled by the web browser rather than your JavaScript code.