returning text(in variable) as a .txt file on-the-fly through http headers and etc

Question

I want to return .txt with some results to user by particular route. so i have:

@route('/export')
def export_results():
    #here is some data gathering ot the variable
    return #here i want to somehow return on-the-fly my variable as a .txt file

So, I know how to:

open, return static_file(root='blahroot',filename='blah'), close, unlink
make some similar actions with 'import tempfile' and so on

BUT: I heard that i can somehow set response http headers in some particular way, that returning my variable as a text will be got by browsers like a file.

the question is: how to make it run this way?

P.S.: as shown in tags I am on Python3, using Bottle and plan to have server from cherrypy as wsgi server

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:16

If I understand correctly, you want your visitor's browser to offer to save the response as a file, rather than displaying it in the browser itself. To do that is simple; just set these headers:

Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="yourfilename.txt"

and the browser will prompt the user to save the file and will suggest file name "yourfilename.txt". (More discussion here.)

To set the headers in Bottle, use response.set_header:

from bottle import response

@route('/export')
def export():
    the_text = <however you choose to get the text of your response>
    response.set_header('Content-Type', 'text/plain')
    response.set_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename="yourfilename.txt"')
    return the_text

returning text(in variable) as a .txt file on-the-fly through http headers and etc

1 Answers1