Force download link for pdf file

From vb asp net code found on the internet i made this simple c download. You can use with the file url passed as "f" querystring parameter.

Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. How to force a pdf download automatically?

Ask Question. Asked 11 years, 7 months ago. Active 5 months ago. Viewed k times. JJJ 32k 20 20 gold badges 86 86 silver badges 99 99 bronze badges. Heinrich Heinrich 2 2 gold badges 8 8 silver badges 6 6 bronze badges.

I hate being forced to download. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Abouasy Abouasy 6 6 silver badges 7 7 bronze badges. Used this and tested it in Chrome, Firefox and IE8. It all works! Simple and easy. I must correct myself! It does not work on IE. I tested it on a virtual machine, in which no pdf reader was installed yet.

In that case the file is always downloaded. This is a good solution for people who don't want to make changes to their server config. The download attribute was added in HTML5.

Something like this:. This link will open the file, either in a Web App or a Desktop Application, depending on your settings. To make the link download you need to remove some things from the copied link. Once you paste the copied link into a hyperlink or button or whatever, just remove all text after the?

Something like the below:. Is there a way to automate the creation of these links? This means that they no longer have a copy of what they purchased. If you wish for all your downloadable content to be automatically saved on your visitors computer complete one of the following options depending on your developer knowledge and website needs :. Encapsulating your downloadable items in a zip file will ensure they are forced to download. This is a simple technique that forces the download as browsers are unable to read a zip file.

The majority of your users will know that they will need to open this file to then receive their downloadable content. Adding some code to your. The following example demonstrates the code that you would need to add to force PDF files to download:. Some file examples include: mp3, mp4 and doc. The example below displays how you can force the download of multiple different files including: mov, mp3, jpg and pdf.

If you are storing your files to your Amazon S3 account instead of your server then you can complete the following to ensure a force download of those files takes place.