Click link to download

[HumbleSeeker]

I'm pretty sure this isn't possible, but the programming Gurus of this forum have surprised me before.

Is there anyway to have a link to a file and when the user clicks on it it brings up the save as screen rather then opening the file. The file in question is a pdf, so I can't count on it being downloaded.

Thanks for reading this, and thanks if you can help.

Humble Seeker

 

[BDC2]

If a file has a MIME type that is recognised by the browser then the browser will open it. So yes, this isn't possible (as far as I am aware).
BDC.

 

[dilettante]

The usual way in ASP would be to:

* Have the link point to an ASP file download page.

* Have the ASP page set the MIME type, and do something like:

Response.AddHeader "content-disposition","attachment; filename='test.pdf'"

* Stream back the file content using ADODB.Stream or something.

The "download page" could easily use a query parameter so you only need one special download-link page. Just make the links point to something like:

filedl.asp?type=pdf;file=test.pdf

And filedl.asp can pull out the type and file parameters.


Here is the best example of this sort of thing I can find right now. They explain a lot of it too, unlike your typical hunk of sample code:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q300108&ID=KB;EN-US;q300108&SD=MSDN