detecting when the "File download" popup is closed

Question

I have a web page (made with JSF) where some links allow the user to get a PDF file.

When the user clicks on such a link, a waiting popup (it is a modal panel) is displayed (because the generation of the PDF can be long), and once the file is created, IE displays the "File download" popup that proposes "Open", "Save" and "Cancel" options.

Is there a way in Javascript to know from my web page when this popup is closed, i.e. when the user has saved (or opened) the PDF file?

To be a little more precise, in the web page that displays the link to the PDF file, a modal popup is displayed (the "waiting popup") in order to make the user waits for the "File download" popup. The problem is that when the user Saves (or open) the PDF file, the "File download" popup closes, but the user then "returns" to the original webpage, with the waiting popup still displayed.

Note that my application runs only in IE6, so I am not against a IE(6)-only solution...

I have also no problem with solutions that need jQuery ;)

Edit: If a solution exists to catch any event that is fired exactly when the "File download" popup is displayed to the user (i.e. before the user chooses to Save, Open or Cancel), it will be fine for me too!

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

16

I had to work on this kind of issue, on another project. I finally found a smart solution, as explained in another Stackoverflow question.

The explanation is given in the following post: http://gruffcode.com/2010/10/28/detecting-the-file-download-dialog-in-the-browser

The idea is to "simply" use a cookie to define when the file is downloaded.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

Community

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answered Jun 13 '12 at 15:28

Romain Linsolas

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score 13 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 20 '09 at 18:01

13

No such event exists. You need to take a different approach to solve this.

target the download link to a hidden iframe with a name (target="myhiddeniframe")
on click of the download link, show your loading spinner
set the onload attribute of the iframe to a callback that hides your spinner

Net effect: you "spin" while the pdf is generated, and "unspin" when the "File download" dialog appears (as opposed to when the "File download" dialog is closed).

answered Mar 20 '09 at 18:01

Crescent Fresh

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Exactly what I was looking for. I already had the modal dialog with the iframe, but I was trying to bind an event to the document load of the loading page in the iframe... this did not work. You solution works. Thanks! – alanquillin May 28 '09 at 13:57
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It sounded ok, but in my case iframe load event is not triggered, probably because it triggers only if content is HTML. – bluish Oct 05 '11 at 16:07
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@bluish: plain ol `` works. Alternatively: `myiframe.onload=...`. Using a lib to attach events (say, via `addEventListener('load')`) does *not* work IIRC. – Crescent Fresh May 20 '14 at 17:01
Sadly, iframe doesn't fire *any* event upon file download. – refik Jun 06 '17 at 13:51

Jerome Jaglale · Answer 3 · 2021-01-13T10:29:15.633

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open your waiting popup
do an AJAX query to generate the file, which returns the URL to that file
in the AJAX query callback, close your waiting popup then redirect to the file URL

Example:

$('.generate_file_asynchronously').click(function(){
    var url = $(this).attr('href');

    show_loading_message();

    $.get(url, function(file_url) {
        hide_loading_message();
        window.location.href = file_url;
    });

    return false;
});

edited Jan 13 '21 at 10:29

answered May 09 '18 at 21:22

Jerome Jaglale

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You save my life! – Sead Lab May 24 '20 at 23:25

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 20 '09 at 14:59

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I am very sure that the answer is no, unless you want to consider some sort of ActiveX plugin to the browser (in which case the answer might still be no...)

answered Mar 20 '09 at 14:59

Richard Ev

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score 0 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

All of the answers that I read here and in related question on stackoverflow and elsewhere only solve the first part of the problem, the time it takes for the server to prepare the file. The second part of the problem, which is the time it takes for the file to actually finish downloading on the client, is not so trivial.

In our application we followed the following approach. We already have a notification push mechanism based on cometd (you can read more about cometd here: What is Cometd ? Why it is used and how to work on that), but I suppose you could also use WebSockets or something similar. We use Java in the back-end, but it can be anything. So:

Client initiates download sending a flag/token containing the user ID and some other unique value that is application and download specific. It hides the download button.
Server receives the request, prepares the file for download and starts the response, setting appropriate headers as discussed in other solutions (e.g. using a cookie).
Client receives the response, but does not show the button, it just knows that the server has successfully created the file and the download started.
Server knows when the download actually finishes (because it's in a loop streaming the file to the output, as described here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2343483/134120). When the server knows that the file has finished downloading, it pushes a notification to the client with the token from step 1 using cometd.
Client receives notification that the download finished and shows the button again.

detecting when the "File download" popup is closed

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