PHP - How to send textarea value with JavaScript AJAX and output it as .txt file for browser to download?

Question

I have a textarea, text input and a button wich sends textarea and text input values (using AJAX post method) to PHP site. Now, I want PHP to output textarea value as .txt file so that it can be download via browser.

My PHP code looks like this:

$text=trim($_POST['text']);  // textarea value
$fileName=$_POST['fileName'].".txt";  // text input value
header("Content-Type: text/plain");
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$fileName.'"');
header("Content-Length: ".mb_strlen($text));
print($text);

Nothing happens, so can you help me please. Thanks. :)

When you say nothing, is nothing happening or is there some sort of error? Check your network log for a 500 or response. — Dylan Madisetti, Nov 18 '14 at 18:38
You can't download a file with Ajax. You can open a new window to point to the file download or send your data to an iframe to call the file generation code. — Robbert, Nov 18 '14 at 18:40
Your code works for me. Is this the first item in you php page? — Demodave, Nov 18 '14 at 18:47
@Robbert actual file.txt does not exist, it's generated on the fly as user sends the data, how can i point it to new window? — Crle, Nov 18 '14 at 18:53
Send it to the page that contains the php code in your post. — Robbert, Nov 18 '14 at 19:23

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

1

Have you considered not sending the text to the server and just creating a download client-side?

This post has some useful suggestions you could try to create a download by bypassing the server completely Create a file in memory for user to download, not through server

edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

Community

1
1

answered Nov 18 '14 at 19:22

Mikhail Janowski

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 18 '14 at 19:10

Maybe you should clean the buffer

while (@ob_end_clean());
ob_start();

header("Content-Type: text/plain");
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$fileName.'"');
header("Content-Length: ".mb_strlen($text));
print($text);

ob_end_flush();
exit();

PHP - How to send textarea value with JavaScript AJAX and output it as .txt file for browser to download?

2 Answers2