how to download file in react js

Question

I receive file url as response from api. when user clicks on download button, the file should be downloaded without opening file preview in a new tab. How to achieve this in

Answer 1

browsers are smart enough to detect the link and downloading it directly when clicking on an anchor tag without using the download attribute.

after getting your file link from the api, just use plain javascript by creating anchor tag and delete it after clicking on it dynamically immediately on the fly.

const link = document.createElement('a');
link.href = `your_link.pdf`;
document.body.appendChild(link);
link.click();
document.body.removeChild(link);

Answer 2

tldr; fetch the file from the url, store it as a local Blob, inject a link element into the DOM, and click it to download the Blob

I had a PDF file that was stored in S3 behind a Cloudfront URL. I wanted the user to be able to click a button and immediately initiate a download without popping open a new tab with a PDF preview. Generally, if a file is hosted at a URL that has a different domain that the site the user is currently on, immediate downloads are blocked by many browsers for user security reasons. If you use this solution, do not initiate the file download unless a user clicks on a button to intentionally download.

In order to get by this, I needed to fetch the file from the URL getting around any CORS policies to save a local Blob that would then be the source of the downloaded file. In the code below, make sure you swap in your own fileURL, Content-Type, and FileName.

fetch('https://cors-anywhere.herokuapp.com/' + fileURL, {
    method: 'GET',
    headers: {
      'Content-Type': 'application/pdf',
    },
  })
  .then((response) => response.blob())
  .then((blob) => {
    // Create blob link to download
    const url = window.URL.createObjectURL(
      new Blob([blob]),
    );
    const link = document.createElement('a');
    link.href = url;
    link.setAttribute(
      'download',
      `FileName.pdf`,
    );

    // Append to html link element page
    document.body.appendChild(link);

    // Start download
    link.click();

    // Clean up and remove the link
    link.parentNode.removeChild(link);
  });

This solution references solutions to getting a blob from a URL and using a CORS proxy.

Answer 3

This is not related to React. However, you can use the download attribute on the anchor <a> element to tell the browser to download the file.

<a href='/somefile.txt' download>Click to download</a>

This is not supported on all browsers: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a

Answer 4

React gives a security issue when using a tag with target="_blank".

I managed to get it working like that:

<a href={uploadedFileLink} target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" download>
   <Button>
      <i className="fas fa-download"/>
      Download File
   </Button>
</a>

Answer 5

If you are using React Router, use this:

<Link to="/files/myfile.pdf" target="_blank" download>Download</Link>

Where /files/myfile.pdf is inside your public folder.

Answer 6

Solution (Work Perfect for React JS, Next JS)

You can use js-file-download and this is my example:

import axios from 'axios'
import fileDownload from 'js-file-download'
 
...

handleDownload = (url, filename) => {
  axios.get(url, {
    responseType: 'blob',
  })
  .then((res) => {
    fileDownload(res.data, filename)
  })
}
 
...

<button onClick={() => {this.handleDownload('https://your-website.com/your-image.jpg', 'test-download.jpg')
}}>Download Image</button>

This plugin can download excel and other file types.