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Question

How to provide (in IE and Firefox) a binary file download in a popup that closes ?

Answer 1

A:

This might be the a way to approach the problem.

1) Popup form onsubmit does a window.open to a third window that opens a page that is a blank page that just returns the downloaded file.

2) In your javascript on the popup form, right after you do the window.open, call your parent window (the 1st window) method that closes the popup submit form.

3) On the third page, which is just the page that returns the file, you the content-disposition in your header file to just return the file and nothing else, so the page won't really open.

Here is some info on the header you might need. The code is in Classic prehistoric ASP, but you should be able to gleam what you need.

http://classicasp.aspfaq.com/general/how-do-i-prompt-a-save-as-dialog-for-an-accepted-mime-type.html

Hope that helps.

infocyde 2009-05-07 14:09:36

I'm not sure step 1 would work in my case, because the form submission in the popup actually generates the file to be downloaded and names it. Until I get the results of this submission, I can't open the third window because I don't know the download URL. That's a solvable problem, but I was hoping not to have to touch the file download servlet itself, since this is a bug fix late in our development cycle.

2009-05-07 15:49:01

Answer 2

+1 A:

Have you tried, in the iframe solution, to actually call a method inside the parent window, which in turn will set the location of the iframe? I'm asking because it worked in my tests:

Parent Window

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
var w;

var download = function() {
    document.frames[0].location = "test.php";
    w.close();
};

var o = function() {
    w = window.open("test2.html", "window_name");
    return false;
};
</script>
</head>
<body>

<a href="#" onclick="return o();">open</a>

<iframe></iframe>

</body>
</html>

Popup window

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
var download = function() {
    window.opener.download();
    return false;
};
</script>
</head>
<body>

<a href="#" onclick="return download();">download</a>

</body>
</html>

test.php is just a page that forces a file for download, and please note that the above code is IE specific as I'm using the document.frames object, but it can be easily made cross-browser.

Ionuț G. Stan 2009-05-07 14:50:10

At the time of the generation of the parent page, the file download URL is not known. I suppose it could be passed in to the download() function. I'll have to try this (early next week, due to my schedule).

2009-05-07 15:34:18

Putting the download() function in the opener did not fix things. IE still blocks and completely mangles the download process. Next step for me is to try loading the form in the iFrame rather than in the popup.

2009-05-11 12:06:59

What version of IE?

Ionuț G. Stan 2009-05-11 12:15:53

I have IE 6.0. We're supposed to support IE7, too.

2009-05-14 13:38:17

Answer 3

A:

There is not any perfect solution for it . When file download in IE its popup and in firefox it directely downloaded

2009-06-23 11:48:05

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How to provide (in IE and Firefox) a binary file download in a popup that closes ?

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