Question

On clcking a link, i want to open a csv file in an Excel. As of now, it opens for me in the browser itself and there is no way to go back. I would like to open it in a popup using Excel.

<a href="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/templates/CSV_Template.csv">
    Click here for csv template

How to achieve this? Can this be done in JSP only using javascript?

I have added target=”_blank” in href. But no luck. It is still opening in the browser. I mean it does open in a new tab. But i donot want that. I would like to open it in the excel popup.

Please provide your suggestions on this. I have a business requirement to acheive this functionality.

Answer 1

If you’re using <a href="...> then add the property target="_blank" and it will download on a separate window.

For example:

<a href="http://www.mydownloads.com/get_csv.jsp" target="_blank">download CSV</a>

Update:

Since you said you tried _blank and had issues, you can redirect to another JSP which will have the following lines in the beginning (before you output the CSV content):

response.setHeader("Content-disposition:", "attachment; filename=mycsvfilename.csv;");
response.setHeader("Authorization", utils.getSafeHeader(request, "Authorization", null));
response.setContentType("application/vnd.ms-excel");
response.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");