How to download file given raw data?

Question

I have a web service call that returns {"data": BINARYDATA}. How can I pop up a dialog to download the file based on only those binary data? It could be a file of any type. I'm probably looking for a Javascript function, or maybe a browser-specific function? Thanks.

EDIT: I am checking to see how the data are encoded. Will update soon with that (important) information.

EDIT 2: I investigated Using HTML5/Javascript to generate and save a file . Thank you for the referral. My main problem with the dataURI method is that my files are larger than 256kB

How are the binary data encoded? (If they're just thrown unencoded and undelimited into a JSON document, then good luck with that!) — hmakholm left over Monica, Aug 25 '11 at 15:22
Where are you contacting the web service from? Are you using ASP.NET...Ruby on Rails...PHP...ASP? — jcvandan, Aug 25 '11 at 15:22
Are you willing to use bleeding-edge HTML5 features? They are not available in all browsers (yet). — pimvdb, Aug 25 '11 at 15:23
See [Using HTML5/Javascript to generate and save a file](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2897619/using-html5-javascript-to-generate-and-save-a-file). — Matthew Flaschen, Aug 25 '11 at 15:23

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 26 '11 at 12:52

Resolved:

The answer is that this is not a good client-side task (particularly when dealing with large files). It's much better to change the server-side code to return the appropriate HTTP response (with headers) instead of JSON.

Thanks everyone for your help in the comments.

How to download file given raw data?

1 Answers1