PDF is blank when downloading using javascript
I have a web service that returns PDF file content in its response. I want to download this as a pdf file when user clicks the link. The javascript code that I have written in UI is as follows:
$http.get('http://MyPdfFileAPIstreamURl').then(function(response){
var blob=new File([response],'myBill.pdf',{type: "text/pdf"});
var link=document.createElement('a');
link.href=window.URL.createObjectURL(blob);
link.download="myBill.pdf";
link.click();
});
'response' contains the PDF byte array from servlet outputstream of 'MyPdfFileAPIstreamURl'. And also the stream is not encrypted.
So when I click the link, a PDF file gets downloaded successfully of size around 200KB. But when I open this file, it opens up with blank pages. The starting content of the downloaded pdf file is in the image.
I can't understand what is wrong here. Help !
This is the downloaded pdf file starting contents:
Solution 1:
solved it via XMLHttpRequest and xhr.responseType = 'arraybuffer';
code:
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open('GET', './api/exportdoc/report_'+id, true);
xhr.responseType = 'arraybuffer';
xhr.onload = function(e) {
if (this.status == 200) {
var blob=new Blob([this.response], {type:"application/pdf"});
var link=document.createElement('a');
link.href=window.URL.createObjectURL(blob);
link.download="Report_"+new Date()+".pdf";
link.click();
}
};
xhr.send();
Solution 2:
i fetched the data from server as string(which is base64 encoded to string) and then on client side i decoded it to base64 and then to array buffer.
Sample code
function solution1(base64Data) {
var arrBuffer = base64ToArrayBuffer(base64Data);
// It is necessary to create a new blob object with mime-type explicitly set
// otherwise only Chrome works like it should
var newBlob = new Blob([arrBuffer], { type: "application/pdf" });
// IE doesn't allow using a blob object directly as link href
// instead it is necessary to use msSaveOrOpenBlob
if (window.navigator && window.navigator.msSaveOrOpenBlob) {
window.navigator.msSaveOrOpenBlob(newBlob);
return;
}
// For other browsers:
// Create a link pointing to the ObjectURL containing the blob.
var data = window.URL.createObjectURL(newBlob);
var link = document.createElement('a');
document.body.appendChild(link); //required in FF, optional for Chrome
link.href = data;
link.download = "file.pdf";
link.click();
window.URL.revokeObjectURL(data);
link.remove();
}
function base64ToArrayBuffer(data) {
var binaryString = window.atob(data);
var binaryLen = binaryString.length;
var bytes = new Uint8Array(binaryLen);
for (var i = 0; i < binaryLen; i++) {
var ascii = binaryString.charCodeAt(i);
bytes[i] = ascii;
}
return bytes;
};
Solution 3:
I was facing the same problem in my React project. On the API I was using res.download() of express to attach the PDF file in the response. By doing that, I was receiving a string based file. That was the real reason why the file was opening blank or corrupted.
In my case the solution was to force the responseType to 'blob'. Since I was making the request via axios, I just simply added this attr in the option object:
axios.get('your_api_url_here', { responseType: 'blob' })
After, to make the download happen, you can do something like this in your 'fetchFile' method:
const response = await youtServiceHere.fetchFile(id)
const pdfBlob = new Blob([response.data], { type: "application/pdf" })
const blobUrl = window.URL.createObjectURL(pdfBlob)
const link = document.createElement('a')
link.href = blobUrl
link.setAttribute('download', customNameIfYouWantHere)
link.click();
link.remove();
URL.revokeObjectURL(blobUrl);
Solution 4:
solved it thanks to rom5jp but adding the sample code for golang and nextjs
in golang using with gingonic context
c.Header("Content-Description", "File-Transfer")
c.Header("Content-Transfer-Encoding", "binary")
c.Header("Content-Disposition","attachement; filename="+fileName)
c.Header("Content-Type", "application/pdf; charset=utf-8")
c.File(targetPath)
//c.FileAttachment(targetPath,fileName)
os.RemoveAll(targetPath)
in next js
const convertToPDF = (res) => {
const uuid = generateUUID();
var a = document.createElement('a');
var url = window.URL.createObjectURL(new Blob([res],{type: "application/pdf"}));
a.href = url;
a.download = 'report.pdf';
a.click();
window.URL.revokeObjectURL(url);
}
const convertFile = async() => {
axios.post('http://localhost:80/fileconverter/upload', {
"token_id" : cookies.access_token,
"request_type" : 1,
"url" : url
},{
responseType: 'blob'
}).then((res)=>{
convertToPDF(res.data)
}, (err) => {
console.log(err)
})
}