Mp4 Download causes browser to play file instead of download

Question

In my website I stream users mp4 content. I also allow users to download. However in Chrome it seems to automatically play the file in an internal player instead of download

Answer 1

Sounds like you are using a direct href to the mp4. If you are using any server side languages (i.e.asp.net, php, etc) language on your website you can force a download. In asp or .net you can use HttpHandlers with "content-disposition","attachment; filename=fname.ext" or return File() ActionResult in MVC. Let me know if you can use any server side code and I can provide some code.

Alternatively you can try the html5 download attribute: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=HTML%2FElement%2Fa#attr-download

i.e. <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/images/myw3schoolsimage.jpg" download="downloadfilename">

Or, try javascript/jQuery. Here is a plugin: http://johnculviner.com/jquery-file-download-plugin-for-ajax-like-feature-rich-file-downloads/

Answer 2

Setting the Content-Disposition header should fix it.

Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=whatever.mp4;

Either in the server settings or in the preprocessing of the page.

Answer 3

You have to use the HTTP header "Content-Disposition" and 'Content-Type: application/force-download' which will force browser to download the content instead of displaying it there.

Depending upon the server side language you are having the implementation differs. In case of

PHP:

    header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$nameOfFile.'"');

will do the job for you.

Ofcourse to simplify and generalize this for all your files, you may need to write a method which will route a link to downloadable content.

The link you can show in the html will be like:

<a href="http://yoursite.com/downloadFile?id=1234">Click here to Download Hello.mp4</a>

And in the server side, you need a script which is being called on /downloadFile (depending on your routing), get the file by id and send it to user as an attachment.

<?php

 $fileId = $_POST['id'];

 // so for url http://yoursite.com/downloadFile?id=1234 will download file
 // /pathToVideoFolder/1234.mp4
 $filePath = "/pathToVideoFolder/".$fileId."mp4";
 $fileName = $fileId."mp4"; //or a name from database like getFilenameForID($id)
 //Assume that $filename and $filePath are correclty set.
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$filename.'"');
header('Content-Type: application/force-download');
readfile($filePath);

Here 'Content-Type: application/force-download' will force the browser to show the download option no matter what's the default setting is for a mime-type.

No matter what your server side technology is, the headers to look out for are:

'Content-Description: File Transfer'
'Content-Type: application/force-download'
'Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="myfile.mp4"

Answer 4

if you want a cross browser solution

you need a server-side code to download the file

example: I am working on jsp technology, if you can use jsp in your website you can try the following code in the file download.jsp:

<%@ page import="java.io.*, java.lang.*, java.util.*" %>
<%
String filename=request.getParameter("filename");   
response.setContentType("application/octet-stream");
response.setHeader("Content-Disposition",
"attachment;filename="+filename);
 %>

<%
/*
 File file = new File(filepath+filename );*/
 String path = getServletContext().getRealPath("/mp4/"+filename); 
 File file = new File(path);
FileInputStream fileIn = new FileInputStream(file);
ServletOutputStream out1 = response.getOutputStream();

byte[] outputByte = new byte[4096];
//copy binary contect to output stream
while(fileIn.read(outputByte, 0, 4096) != -1)
{
    out1.write(outputByte, 0, 4096);
}
fileIn.close();
out1.flush();
out1.close();
 %>

you can put the code above in a file: download.jsp

then in your page links you will use it like:

<a href="download.jsp?filename=song1.mp4">song1</a>

with my best wishes to you

Answer 5

You can get it done in a couple of ways. I'm not sure you use IIS or apache and which server side language you are using, but the techniques are similar for all.

You can add the MIME type application/octect-stream to the extension .mp4 in your IIS or apache, sothat all files with extension .mp4 will be shown with a download prompt. This is the most easy and sure fire way of showing the "download" prompt.

Plz see the example below.

http://www.codingstaff.com/learning-center/other/how-to-add-mime-types-to-your-server

In the above example, instead of setting video/mp4 fpr .mp4 extensions, change it to application/octect-stream

Also, the same can be done via server side code as well, (PHP code). The code will be similar with ASP.NET also,please google for "force file download"

$file_url = 'http://www.myremoteserver.com/file.mp4';
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: Binary"); 
header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=\"" . basename($file_url) . "\""); 
readfile($file_url);