Detect when browser receives file download

Question

I have a page that allows the user to download a dynamically-generated file. It takes a long time to generate, so I\'d like to show a \"waiting\" indicator. The problem is,

Answer 1

In my experience, there are two ways to handle this:

1. Set a short-lived cookie on the download, and have JavaScript continually check for its existence. Only real issue is getting the cookie lifetime right - too short and the JS can miss it, too long and it might cancel the download screens for other downloads. Using JS to remove the cookie upon discovery usually fixes this.
2. Download the file using fetch/XHR. Not only do you know exactly when the file download finishes, if you use XHR you can use progress events to show a progress bar! Save the resulting blob with msSaveBlob in IE/Edge and a download link (like this one) in Firefox/Chrome. The problem with this method is that iOS Safari doesn't seem to handle downloading blobs right - you can convert the blob into a data URL with a FileReader and open that in a new window, but that's opening the file, not saving it.