POST to server, receive PDF, deliver to user w/ jQuery

Question

I have a link that the user clicks to get a PDF. In jQuery, I create a POST ajax call to the server to get the PDF. The PDF comes to me with the correct content headers et

Answer 1

The answer mentioning "jQuery Plugin for Requesting Ajax-like File Downloads" got me headed down the right direction, but it didn't work entirely for my situation since I have a complex object and array of objects to pass in as my search criteria/filter data. I figured I'd share my code in case someone else runs into this situation too.

$.download = function (url, data, method) {
    if (url && data) {
        //convert the data object into input HTML fields
        var inputs = '';
        var convertToInput = function (key, keyStr, obj) {
            if (typeof obj === 'undefined') {
                return;
            } else if (typeof obj === "object") {
                for (var innerKey in obj) {
                    if (obj.hasOwnProperty(innerKey)) {
                        var innerKeyStr = '';
                        if (keyStr === '') {
                            innerKeyStr = innerKey.toString();
                        } else {
                            innerKeyStr = keyStr + "[" + innerKey.toString() + "]";
                        }
                        convertToInput(innerKey, innerKeyStr, obj[innerKey]);
                    }
                }
                return;
            } else if ($.isArray(obj)) {
                obj.forEach(function (item) {
                    convertToInput(key, keyStr + "[]", item);
                });
                return;
            }

            inputs += "<input type='hidden' name='" + keyStr + "' value='" + obj + "' />";
        };
        convertToInput(null, '', data);

        //send request
        jQuery('<form action="' + url + '" method="' + (method || 'post') + '">' + inputs + '</form>').appendTo('body').submit().remove();
    };
};
$.download('/api/search?format=csv', searchData, 'POST');

It probably doesn't make much of a difference, but to provide some context, I've got a javascript and knockout UI calling into WebAPI, MVC4, and nHibernate. The 'format=csv' part of the query string triggers a MediaTypeFormatter to convert the returned models into a CSV file type. If I leave that off, then I get the models back from the API and can populate a Slick grid for display.