How to trigger a file download when clicking an HTML button or JavaScript

Question

This is crazy but I don\'t know how to do this, and because of how common the words are, it\'s hard to find what I need on search engines. I\'m thinking this should be an ea

Answer 1

You can do it with "trick" with invisible iframe. When you set "src" to it, browser reacts as if you would click a link with the same "href". As opposite to solution with form, it enables you to embed additional logic, for example activating download after timeout, when some conditions are met etc.

It is also very silient, there's no blinking new window/tab like when using window.open.

HTML:

Javascript:

function download() {
    var iframe = document.getElementById('invisible');
    iframe.src = "file.doc";
}