How to make a browser display a "save as dialog" so the user can save the content of a string to a file on his system?
JavascriptSaveSavefiledialogJavascript Problem Overview
How can I make a browser display a "save as dialog" so the user can save the content of a string to a file on his system?
For example:
var myString = "my string with some stuff";
save_to_filesystem(myString,"myString.txt");
Resulting in something like this:
Javascript Solutions
Solution 1 - Javascript
In case anyone is still wondering...
I did it like this:
<a href="data:application/xml;charset=utf-8,your code here" download="filename.html">Save</a>
can't remember my source but it uses the following techniques\features:
- html5 download attribute
- data URI's
Found the reference:
http://paxcel.net/blog/savedownload-file-using-html5-javascript-the-download-attribute-2/
EDIT: As you can gather from the comments, this does NOT work in
- Internet Explorer (however works in Edge v13 and later)
- Opera Mini
Solution 2 - Javascript
There is a new spec called the Native File System API that allows you to do this properly like this:
const result = await window.chooseFileSystemEntries({ type: "save-file" });
There is a demo here, but I believe it is using an origin trial so it may not work in your own website unless you sign up or enable a config flag, and it obviously only works in Chrome. If you're making an Electron app this might be an option though.
Solution 3 - Javascript
There is a javascript library for this, see FileSaver.js on Github
However the saveAs()
function won't send pure string to the browser, you need to convert it to blob
:
function data2blob(data, isBase64) {
var chars = "";
if (isBase64)
chars = atob(data);
else
chars = data;
var bytes = new Array(chars.length);
for (var i = 0; i < chars.length; i++) {
bytes[i] = chars.charCodeAt(i);
}
var blob = new Blob([new Uint8Array(bytes)]);
return blob;
}
and then call saveAs
on the blob, as like:
var myString = "my string with some stuff";
saveAs( data2blob(myString), "myString.txt" );
Of course remember to include the above-mentioned javascript library on your webpage using <script src=FileSaver.js>
Solution 4 - Javascript
This is possible using this cross browser javascript implementation of the HTML5 saveAs
function: https://github.com/koffsyrup/FileSaver.js
If all you want to do is save text then the above script works in all browsers(including all versions of IE), using nothing but JS.
Solution 5 - Javascript
Solution using only javascript
function saveFile(fileName,urlFile){
let a = document.createElement("a");
a.style = "display: none";
document.body.appendChild(a);
a.href = urlFile;
a.download = fileName;
a.click();
window.URL.revokeObjectURL(url);
a.remove();
}
let textData = `El contenido del archivo
que sera descargado`;
let blobData = new Blob([textData], {type: "text/plain"});
let url = window.URL.createObjectURL(blobData);
//let url = "pathExample/localFile.png"; // LocalFileDownload
saveFile('archivo.txt',url);
Solution 6 - Javascript
Using execComand:
<input type="button" name="save" value="Save" onclick="javascript:document.execCommand('SaveAs','true','your_file.txt')">
In the next link: execCommand