Stream files in node/express to client

Question

I want to stream content to clients which is possibly stored in db, which they would save as files.

Obviously res.download would do the job nicely, but none of the r

Answer 1

You can stream directly to the response object (it is a Stream).

A basic file stream would look something like this.

function(req, res, next) {
  if(req.url==="somethingorAnother") {
    res.setHeader("content-type", "some/type");
    fs.createReadStream("./toSomeFile").pipe(res);
  } else {
    next(); // not our concern, pass along to next middleware function
  }
}

This will take care of binding to data and end events.

Answer 2

Make sure that your AJAX request from the client has an appropriate 'responseType' set. for example like

$http({
  method :'GET',
  url : http://url,
  params:{},
  responseType: 'arraybuffer'
}).success()