CODEWITHSUNDEEP
html
user9621809
user9621809

Reputation:

How to download html file from another website

I want to download an html file from another website , I have tried the following code but it's not working , It just redirects to the website:

<a href='http://example.com' download>Download</a>

So how to download an html file from another website?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 6034

Answers (2)

Aldana
Aldana

Reputation: 383

As explained in the comments, the download attribute only works for same origin URLs.

I solved this by exposing an endpoint in the backend that redirects to the url with the file I want to download, and pointing to that on the client side.

Frontend

<a href='/download-file' download>Download</a>

Backend

router.get('/download-file', (req, res, next) => {
  res.redirect('http://example.com/url-to-the-file');
});

Beware of what you are redirecting to if you don't have control over those files.

In my case the file was hosted in a CDN, which made the origin of the URL different, but I still had control over it.

Upvotes: 4

Daniel Gale
Daniel Gale

Reputation: 663

The <a> is for directing a user to a specified link. In html5 you may add the property download and link to a specific file to signify that you are intending to serve the file as a download.

In this case the href value should point to a specific file and not just a directory. The html file with the link must also be marked with a doctype for html5 at the top <!DOCTYPE html>.

You must serve the html/download from the same domain as your site or else deal with CORS which is another topic.

Example

<a href='http://example.com/myFileToDownload.html' download>Download Source</a>

Upvotes: -2

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