Is there a way to force the user to download a file from a href link rather than to open it in a browser window?

Question

Basically I wrote a script that generates a xml file based on user input. After the file is generated a download link appears like so:

<a href="path/to/file.xml">Download File</a>

But when clicked it opens the xml in the browser, I want it to start downloading when the link it clicked instead. Is there any way to achieve that?

Answer 1

What happens when a browser sees a link is not dependent on the link, but rather on the target of the link. Your web server should send the appropriate header: Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="file.xml" to tell the browser that it should prompt to save the file instead of displaying it.

Answer 2

It depends on what the client computer does with XML files. If you doubleclick on a XML file, it will open in your browser probably.

Answer 3

Yeah, there is. It does require specifying some headers. Exactly how it works depends on what language you're using, but here's an example using php, taken off of php.net:

<?php
// We'll be outputting a PDF
header('Content-type: application/pdf');

// It will be called downloaded.pdf
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="downloaded.pdf"');

// The PDF source is in original.pdf
readfile('original.pdf');
?>

Basically, first we tell the client what type of file we're sending, then we tell the client that what we're sending is an attachment, and it's name, instead of it being a page to display, and then finally we print/read the file to the output.

Given that you're already using php to generate the xml file, I would suggest adding the header commands above to the code that generates the xml file, and see if that does the trick.

Answer 4

download.php:

header('Content-Type: text/xml');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="file.xml"');
readfile('/path/to/file.xml');

HTML:

<a href="download.php">Download</a>

Answer 5

If you happen to be using Apache for your web server, and you always want to force downloading of XML files, there is a more efficient way to do what @chigley suggested. Just add the following to a .htaccess file.

<Files *.xml>
ForceType application/xml
Header set Content-Disposition attachment
</Files>