Question

The context is this:

1. The user click on a button
2. The page is refreshed with new information on the page (echo is used to print html code).
3. A file.txt is created
4. The download of the created file should start automatically

With the code below, the file is created and the remaining part of the page is presented, but no download starts. Also, if I click on the link, the download doesn’t start, but the txt file is opened in the browser (whilst I want to force the download).

On the other hand, if I comment the javascript and uncomment the header instructions, I refresh the correct page and download the txt file, but the content of that file is wrong (it contains the html code echoed in the rest of the page).

=================NOT WORKING CODE==================

      echo "
      <form name=\"fn\" action=\"index.php?option=com_comp\" method=\"post\">
      // more not related stuff
      <input type=\"image\" src=\"".JURI::root().
      "components/com_comp/images/download_icon.png\" .
      "\" name=\"downloadaddresses\">DOWNLOAD_RESULTS
      // more not related stuff";


      if($_POST['downloadaddresses_x']!=0) {

            $myfilename = "tmp/results.txt";
            $fh = fopen($myfilename, 'w');

            $recipients = $_POST['recipients'];
            $semicolon_separated = implode(";", $recipients);

            fwrite($fh, $semicolon_separated);
            fclose($fh);


            /*header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename='.$myfilename);
            header("Content-type: application/octet-stream");*/

            echo "<a href=\"".$myfilename."\" id=\"downloadlink\">
            This download should start automatically!</a>";
            echo "<script type=\"text/javascript\">
                    newwindow=function{
            window.open('".$myfilename."','name','height=400,width=200');
                    if (window.focus) {newwindow.focus()}}
                </script>";
        }           

========================MORE CODE THAT DOES NOT WORK==================

    <script type="text/javascipt">  
    var el = document.getElementById('downloadlink');
    if (document.createEvent) {
        var event = document.createEvent(\"MouseEvents\");
        event.initEvent(\"click\", true, true);
        el.dispatchEvent(event);
    }
    else if (el.click) {
        el.click();
    }
    </script>

Answer 1

Instead of this click simulation code:

<script type="text/javascipt">  
var el = document.getElementById('downloadlink');
if (document.createEvent) {
    var event = document.createEvent(\"MouseEvents\");
    event.initEvent(\"click\", true, true);
    el.dispatchEvent(event);
}
else if (el.click) {
    el.click();
}
</script>

Can you use this:

<script type="text/javascript">
    location.href = document.getElementById('downloadlink').getAttribute('href');
</script>