Can I force the browser to download the PDF file instead of opening it?

Question

So this is the code I have:

public class PdfDownloaderServlet extends HttpServlet {

    @Override
    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest httpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse httpServletResponse)
            throws ServletException, IOException {
        httpServletResponse.setContentType("application/pdf");
        ServletContext servletContext = httpServletRequest.getServletContext();
        InputStream inputStream = servletContext.getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/classes/pdfs/x.pdf");
        int read;
        byte[] bytes = new byte[1024];
        OutputStream os = httpServletResponse.getOutputStream();
        while ((read = inputStream.read(bytes)) != -1) {
            os.write(bytes, 0, read);
        }
        os.flush();
        os.close();
    }
}

and it works just fine.

However when I click the link that invokes this method, the browser will open the file, but I want the browser to directly download the file. How can I achieve this?

Thanks.

Try using `application/octet-stream`. The browser won't know it is a pdf — rpax, May 05 '14 at 17:35
@LuiggiMendoza It won't be fair. It's answered here: http://stackoverflow.com/q/6520231/3315914 . I didn't know there was an specific mime type for that — rpax, May 05 '14 at 17:43
Possible duplicate of [How to force browser to download file?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6520231/how-to-force-browser-to-download-file) — DDK, Oct 03 '17 at 14:38

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 05 '14 at 20:20

1

If you want the browser to download as attachment, you need to say so using the Content-Disposition header field. See http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc6266.html#disposition.type, disposition type "attachment".

answered May 05 '14 at 20:20

Julian Reschke

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Can I force the browser to download the PDF file instead of opening it?

1 Answers1