How to send a pdf file from Node/Express app to the browser

Question

In my Node/Express app I have the following code, which suppose to read a PDF document from a file, and send it to the browser:

var file = fs.createReadStream('./public/modules/datacollectors/output.pdf', 'binary');
var stat = fs.statSync('./public/modules/datacollectors/output.pdf');
res.setHeader('Content-Length', stat.size);
res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/pdf');
res.setHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename=quote.pdf');
res.pipe(file, 'binary');
res.end();

I do not get any errors, but I do not get the file in my browser either. What am I doing wrong?

one important detail - I'm trying to send a file back to the browser in response to http POST — Eugene Goldberg, Jun 29 '15 at 00:21

hassansin · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-29T00:18:23.093

92

You have to pipe from Readable Stream to Writable stream not the other way around:

var file = fs.createReadStream('./public/modules/datacollectors/output.pdf');
var stat = fs.statSync('./public/modules/datacollectors/output.pdf');
res.setHeader('Content-Length', stat.size);
res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/pdf');
res.setHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename=quote.pdf');
file.pipe(res);

Also you are setting encoding in wrong way, pass an object with encoding if needed.

edited Jun 29 '15 at 00:18

answered Jun 29 '15 at 00:12

hassansin

16,918
3
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2

now I can see the file contents being sent to the browser console, but the file still does not 'pop' out of the browser as an attachment. – Eugene Goldberg Jun 29 '15 at 14:27
1

found a solution for that? – Sahar Zehavi Aug 29 '16 at 08:48
2

@EugeneGoldberg you can use this node module https://www.npmjs.com/package/file-saver to download the data. You can convert the data to blob as follows var blob = new Blob([data], {type: "application/pdf"}); FileSaver.default(blob, fileNameWithExtension); – Hari Prathap Apr 02 '19 at 16:13
6

`res.send(buffer)` for buffers. – Renan Coelho Mar 30 '21 at 22:53

Wenlong Jiang · Answer 2 · 2019-04-02T15:50:43.760

I think I found your answer in another post Display PDF file in a browser using node js.

After testing your code in Chrome, it immediately starts the download of the PDF file. But if you want to display the content of the PDF file you could try below:

var data =fs.readFileSync('./public/modules/datacollectors/output.pdf');
res.contentType("application/pdf");
res.send(data);

This should directly send PDF content into the browser.

Hope this answers your question.

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 13 '20 at 15:02

14

Here's the easiest way:

app.get('/', (req, res) => res.download('./file.pdf'))

If this gives you trouble. Check the Express.js version or any middlewares that might be necessary.

Cheers

answered Apr 13 '20 at 15:02

Christopher Chalfant

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Very helpful for testing. – Trần Hữu Hiền Nov 08 '22 at 01:32

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 19 '18 at 07:39

Best way to download a PDF on REST API call.

var path = require('path');     
var file = path.join(__dirname, 'file.pdf');    
res.download(file, function (err) {
       if (err) {
           console.log("Error");
           console.log(err);
       } else {
           console.log("Success");
       }    
});

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 01 '19 at 01:05

If you are using the Swagger/OpenAPI then you can look in responses section of below code. /api/pdf_from_html: post: tags: - PDF description: Create PDF from html produces: - application/pdf consumes: - application/json parameters: - name: contents description: HTML content to convert to pdf in: body required: true schema: $ref: "#/definitions/pdf" responses: 200: description: Returns a PDF encoded in base64 content: application/pdf: schema: type: string format: base64

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 08 '22 at 11:53

0

i guess it is simple if you want to show it in the browser change content disposition header to "inline" instead of "attachment; filename=quote.pdf" inline show it directly in the browser instead of download it, it worked fine for me

answered Mar 08 '22 at 11:53

Ahmed Abdalrahman

1

How to send a pdf file from Node/Express app to the browser

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