Nodejs write files

Question

I have a problem with nodejs. Im now making a server that will serve the files requested by the users. What I did:

• I get the path
• find the file (fs.exists())
• If the path is a file get the stream
• stream.pipe (response)

The problem now is that I want that the user download the file, but if I write a .txt file, the pipe method write the content of the file in the browser... So, I tried with a .pdf, but in this case the web page keep loading and nothing happen... Can someone help?

if(exists) {
 response.writeHead(302, {"Content-type":'text/plain'});
 var stat = fs.statSync(pathname);
 if(stat.isFile()) {
 var stream = fs.createReadStream(pathname);
 stream.pipe(response);
 } else {
 response.writeHead(404, {"Content-type":'text/plain'});
 response.end()
 }
 //response.end();
} else {
 response.writeHead(404, {"Content-type":'text/plain'});
 response.write("Not Found");
 response.end()
}

• jmingov: welcome, you should add the code. then SO can help you. thanks
• cr0: Have a look at express's sendfile. It also does the content-type handling for you.

Answer 1

Well, in your if case you always set the Content-Type header to text/plain, that's why your browser shows your text file inline. And for your PDF, text/plain is just the wrong one, it should be application/pdf, so you need to set the type dynamically.

If you want the browser to enforce a download, set the following headers:

Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="your filename..."
Content-Type: text/plain (or whatever your content-type is...)

Basically, this is what Express's res.download function does as well internally, so this function may be worth a look as well.

• Greennnnn: Nice it works, thank you. But I cant use setHeader and the write the header right?
• Greennnnn: I mean, can you specify that when you do response.writeHeader()?

Answer 2

well, looks like the problem is that the pdf content type isnt text/plain.

Replace the content type to application/pdf

like:

response.writeHead(302, {"Content-type":'application/pdf'});

More info here: http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types and http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3778.txt