Ajax - Get size of file before downloading

You can get XHR response header data manually:

http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest/#the-getresponseheader()-method

This function will get the filesize of the requested URL:

function get_filesize(url, callback) {
    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.open("HEAD", url, true); // Notice "HEAD" instead of "GET",
                                 //  to get only the header
    xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
        if (this.readyState == this.DONE) {
            callback(parseInt(xhr.getResponseHeader("Content-Length")));
        }
    };
    xhr.send();
}

get_filesize("http://example.com/foo.exe", function(size) {
    alert("The size of foo.exe is: " + size + " bytes.");
});

Sometimes HEAD can act differently than GET so I suggest something like this that aborts the request after getting Content-Length header:

new Promise(resolve => {
    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.open('GET', '/a.bin', true);
    xhr.onreadystatechange = () => {
        resolve(+xhr.getResponseHeader("Content-Length"));
        xhr.abort();
    };
    xhr.send();
}).then(console.log);

If HEAD request is not possible:

The solution Ebrahim did only not work in firefox for me because context-length was not available for aborted request in firefox. So I used 'onprogress' event instead of 'onreadystatechange' event:

new Promise(
  (resolve, reject) => {
    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.open('GET', url, true);
    xhr.onprogress = (event) => {
      if (event.lengthComputable) {
        resolve(event.total);
      } else {
        reject(new Error('No content-length available'));
      }
      xhr.abort();
    };
    xhr.send();
  }
);