Any fallback client-side solutions for the html5 download attribute?

Question

Is there a client-side fallback option for browsers that don\'t support the HTML5 \"download\" attribute?

Currently, this is only properly supported in Chrome. Firef

Answer 1

I wrote this JS [attrDownloadIE.js]

// author: Carlos Machado
// version: 0.1
// year: 2015
//
var f_name = "";
var f_ref = "";

function reqListener() {
  if(f_name == "") {f_name = f_ref;}
  var blobObject = this.response;
  window.navigator.msSaveBlob(blobObject, f_name); 
}

function myDownload(evt) {
  f_name = this.getAttribute("download");
  f_ref = this.getAttribute("href");
  evt.preventDefault();
  var oReq1 = new XMLHttpRequest();
  oReq1.addEventListener("load",reqListener, false);
  oReq1.open("get", this, true);
  oReq1.responseType = 'blob';
  oReq1.send();
}

document.addEventListener(
  "load",
  function(event){
    var isIE = /*@cc_on!@*/false || !!document.documentMode;
    if(isIE) {
      var items = document.querySelectorAll('a[download], area[download]');
      for(var i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
        items[i].addEventListener('click', myDownload, false);
      }
    }
  }
);

Answer 2

The short answer: no. Besides the download attribute that you already mentioned, there is no clean client-side method to do this. Sending the proper header would be best, but there is a hack that you probably don't want to use:

For all links with the download attribute (you can get those with document.querySelectorAll('a[download]')), use XMLHttpRequest to get the page/data at the URL mentioned in the HREF. Then, use the btoa() function (or a polyfill for IEs) to convert it to a base64 string. Now add "data:application/octet-stream;base64," to the beginning of the string and set this as the anchor's new HREF attribute, then remove the download attribute. (You probably want to probe browser support first, with something like Modernizr).

I told you that you wouldn't like it!