for download files with express and Node.JS

Question

With Apache this this really easy, but with Node.JS I don't think so. Simply, I want that when a user click something like this: <a href="/dir/file.png">, he starts to download the file. When I do that, I'm redirected to http://foo.com/fir/file.png, and I visualize the photo. Also say that I have in the app configure this app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));, so, the file is in the public path, and the public path is declared as static. And, when the users click, I dont want that he will be redirected and then the download starts.

I know this is posible, it's just click a link and a download starts! But I don't know how to do it.

Thank's advance!

EDITED:

The HTML where is the <a href="">for the download is here:

app.get('/:user/:id', function (req, res){

  usermodel.findOne({ user: req.params.user }, function (err, user){

   var imagen = user.imagen.id(req.params.id);

    if (err) throw err;

        res.render('photo.ejs', {
            user: user,
            photo: imagen,
        });
    });
});

Is necessary to create a new app.get? If I do that, I would get redirected? I'm trying to do this without getting redirected.

Use [`Content-Disposition`](http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec19.html) in combination with `Content-Type: application/octet-stream`. — maerics, Feb 07 '13 at 18:33
posible duplicate http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7288814/download-file-from-nodejs-server — Gurjinder Singh, Feb 07 '13 at 18:34
This might help http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2408146/href-image-link-download-on-click — Hector Correa, Feb 07 '13 at 18:35

rdrey · Answer 1 · 2013-02-07T19:32:40.883

4

This depends on the headers you're sending with the image.

To make the browser download the image instead of displaying it, you need to set a "Content-Disposition: attachment" header.

Since you're using the static middleware, this is a bit trickier to do than in your own request handler function. You'll have to inject a middleware before the static one.

app.use(function(req, res, next) {
  if (req.path.split('/')[0] === "downloads")
    res.attachment(); //short for res.set('Content-Disposition', 'attachment')
  next();
});

app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));

edited Feb 07 '13 at 19:32

answered Feb 07 '13 at 18:40

rdrey

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I think this is a great solution for a whole directory. It's worth noting that express provides [res.attachment](http://expressjs.com/api.html#res.attachment) for setting the `Content-Disposition` header for a specific file. – David Weldon Feb 07 '13 at 19:05

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 01 '14 at 11:06

Similarly to @rdrey's answer, make the browser download a file if there's ?dl query parameter in the url.

app.use('/gifs/*.gif', function(req, res, next) {
  if (req.query.dl !== undefined) res.attachment();
  next();
});

app.use('/gifs', express.static(__dirname + '/gifs'));

for download files with express and Node.JS

2 Answers2