My issue stemmed from the fact that I could not just use res.sendFile() or res.download() from Express because the route was not being accessed by the browser URL bar, rather, my application uses client-side routing, and thus I had to make an HTTP GET Request via Fetch or XMLHttpRequest.
The second issue is that I needed to build the PDF file on the server based on an HTML string sent from the client - so again, I need to make a GET Request sending along a request body.
My solution, then, using Fetch, was to make the Get Request from the client:
fetch('/route' , {
method: 'GET',
body: 'My HTML String'
});
On the server, I have my code that converts the HTML string to a PDF, using the HTML-PDF Node module, and then, I convert that file to a Base64 String, setting the MIME Type and appending data:application/pdf;base64,.
app.get('/route', (req, res) => {
// Use req.body to build and save PDF to temp storage (os.tempdir())
// ...
fs.readFile('./myPDF.pdf', (err, data) => {
if (err) res.status(500).send(err);
res.contentType('application/pdf')
.send(`data:application/pdf;base64,${new Buffer.from(data).toString('base64')}`);
});
});
Back on the client, I have my aforementioned Fetch Request, meaning I just need to tack on the promise to get the response:
fetch('/route', {
method: 'POST',
body: 'My HTML String' // Would define object and stringify.
})
.then(res => res.text())
.then(base64String => {
// Now I just need to download the base64String as a PDF.
});
To make the download, I dynamically create an anchor tag, set its href attribute to the Base64 String in the response from the server, give it a title, and then programmatically click it:
const anchorTag = document.createElement('a');
anchorTag.href = base64String;
anchorTag.download = "My PDF File.pdf";
anchorTag.click();
So, all together and on the client:
fetch('/route', {
method: 'POST',
body: 'My HTML String' // Would define object and stringify.
})
.then(res => res.text())
.then(base64String => {
const anchorTag = document.createElement('a');
anchorTag.href = base64String;
anchorTag.download = "My PDF File.pdf";
anchorTag.click();
});
The solution for using an anchor tag to trigger the download came from another StackOverflow answer. It's also important to note that Base64 Encoding is not very efficient. Better solutions exist, but for my purposes, Base64 will work fine.
It is also imperative to note that Base64 Encoding is precisely that - an Encoding Scheme, not, I repeat, not an Encryption Scheme. So if your PDF files contain privileged information, you would likely want to add token authentication to the endpoint and encrypt the file.