Meta refresh download (txt, ini, css or html) file

Question

I searched online about this meta refresh code in html

<META HTTP-EQUIV='REFRESH' CONTENT='5;URL=http://www.example.com/test.txt'>

this code redirects the page to http://www.example.com/test.txt after 5 seconds..

i wanted it to download the file! not opening it in the browser!,

some extensions doesn't download using this code, like ( js jpg html css.. etc.. ),

the browser just open them!, well i want the browser to download not to open,

Does anybody know how?

You can't force a download. That would be a huge security issue. — j08691, Nov 03 '14 at 18:36
You can try to [set the right headers](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/386845/http-headers-for-file-downloads) — GolezTrol, Nov 03 '14 at 18:47
Mr. j08691 you can force download if your file extension is (exe or else ) — Tarık Seyceri, Nov 04 '14 at 00:09

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

You need your server to send the HTTP header Content-Disposition: attachment along with the file you want to download rather than display in the browser. How you do this depends entirely on what server software you're using.

For example with on an Apache server with mod_headers enabled, you'd add something like this to the .htaccess file in your web root directory:

<Files "test.txt">
    ForceType text/plain
    Header set Content-Disposition "attachment"
</Files>

For other software you can check the documentation.

In addition, it's possible to load and stream the file, with the correct headers, with a very simple PHP script like this one: https://stackoverflow.com/a/20080402/1546831

Meta refresh download (txt, ini, css or html) file

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