Trigger a file download on click of button Javascript with contents from DOM

Question

I want to download a file which is created from DOM element. So a user clicks a button on web page and it invokes a javascript method which may grab the contents of DOM element

Answer 1

I am not sure if I understand correctly what is the content that you are trying to download. If you have the content (which sounds like the HTML of an element?) stored in a variable, you can try:

("#downloadbutton").click(function() {
  //var content = content of file;
  var dl = document.createElement('a');
  dl.setAttribute('href', 'data:text/csv;charset=utf-8,' + encodeURIComponent(content));
  dl.setAttribute('download', 'filename.txt');
  dl.click();
});

Answer 2

I appreciated finding this question, but at least on Firefox running with linux, you need to append the dl element to the document to get the click functionality to work. I haven't tested extensively on other browsers how necessary this is, but it is necessary on some at least, so I recommend the following modification:

var content = document.getElementById("elem").innerHTML;
var dl = document.createElement('a');
dl.setAttribute('href', 'data:text/csv;charset=utf-8,' + encodeURIComponent(content));
dl.setAttribute('download', 'filename.txt');
// Set hidden so the element doesn't disrupt your page
dl.setAttribute('visibility', 'hidden');
dl.setAttribute('display', 'none');
// Append to page
document.body.appendChild(dl);
// Now you can trigger the click
dl.click();

Answer 3

Figured it out: I had to do `

function myAlert(){
    var content = document.getElementById("elem").innerHTML;
    var dl = document.createElement('a');
    dl.setAttribute('href', 'data:text/csv;charset=utf-8,' + encodeURIComponent(content));
    dl.setAttribute('download', 'filename.txt');
    dl.click();
}

document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function () {
    document.getElementById('alertButton').addEventListener('click', myAlert);
});