Using HTML5/JavaScript to generate and save a file

Question

I\'ve been fiddling with WebGL lately, and have gotten a Collada reader working. Problem is it\'s pretty slow (Collada is a very verbose format), so I\'m going to start conv

Answer 1

Take a look at Doug Neiner's Downloadify which is a Flash based JavaScript interface to do this.

Downloadify is a tiny JavaScript + Flash library that enables the generation and saving of files on the fly, in the browser, without server interaction.

Answer 2

Simple solution for HTML5 ready browsers...

function download(filename, text) {
    var pom = document.createElement('a');
    pom.setAttribute('href', 'data:text/plain;charset=utf-8,' + encodeURIComponent(text));
    pom.setAttribute('download', filename);

    if (document.createEvent) {
        var event = document.createEvent('MouseEvents');
        event.initEvent('click', true, true);
        pom.dispatchEvent(event);
    }
    else {
        pom.click();
    }
}

Usage

download('test.txt', 'Hello world!');

Answer 3

try

let a = document.createElement('a');
a.href = "data:application/octet-stream,"+encodeURIComponent('"My DATA"');
a.download = 'myFile.json';
a.click(); // we not add 'a' to DOM so no need to remove

If you want to download binary data look here

Update

2020.06.14 I upgrade Chrome to 83.0 and above SO snippet stop works (due to sandbox security restrictions) - but JSFiddle version works - here

Answer 4

When testing the "ahref" method, I found that the web developer tools of Firefox and Chrome gets confused. I needed to restart the debugging after the a.click() was issued. Same happened with the FileSaver (it uses the same ahref method to actually make the saving). To work around it, I created new temporary window, added the element a into that and clicked it there.

    function download_json(dt) {
        var csv = ' var data = ';
        csv += JSON.stringify(dt, null, 3);

        var uricontent = 'data:application/octet-stream,' + encodeURI(csv);

        var newwin = window.open( "", "_blank" );
        var elem = newwin.document.createElement('a');
        elem.download = "database.js";
        elem.href = uricontent;
        elem.click();
        setTimeout(function(){ newwin.close(); }, 3000);
        
    }

Answer 5

HTML5 defined a window.saveAs(blob, filename) method. It isn't supported by any browser right now. But there is a compatibility library called FileSaver.js that adds this function to most modern browsers (including Internet Explorer 10+). Internet Explorer 10 supports a navigator.msSaveBlob(blob, filename) method (MSDN), which is used in FileSaver.js for Internet Explorer support.

I wrote a blog posting with more details about this problem.

Answer 6

I've used FileSaver (https://github.com/eligrey/FileSaver.js) and it works just fine.
For example, I did this function to export logs displayed on a page.
You have to pass an array for the instanciation of the Blob, so I just maybe didn't write this the right way, but it works for me.
Just in case, be careful with the replace: this is the syntax to make this global, otherwise it will only replace the first one he meets.

exportLogs : function(){
    var array = new Array();

    var str = $('#logs').html();
    array[0] = str.replace(/<br>/g, '\n\t');

    var blob = new Blob(array, {type: "text/plain;charset=utf-8"});
    saveAs(blob, "example.log");
}