How to post a request and download file to disk with angular? - angularjs

Question

In angular, I want to download a text file containing a csv of userdata. Usually I have a form with a post action, but I want the user to stay on the same page, but return the csv data without any page referesh. The following is my post command:
$http({
url: "api/getUserData",
method: "POST",
data:{user_id:app.user_id}
}).success(function(data, status, headers, config) {
// data gets returned here
}).error(function(data, status, headers, config) {
$scope.status = status;
});
My problem is, the "data" that comes back from the post is a csv file. how can I get the data to actually "download" to the user's computer instead of living in the javascript? Is this even possible?

Answer 1

Here is the link to solution. It uses HTML5 FileSaver API to save the file as BLOB

Answer 2

You can do this :
Create temporary anchor ,
encode, your data & name your file using download attribute,
and then, fire a click event on it.
finally, remove the inserted element .
$http({
url: "api/getUserData",
method: "POST",
data:{user_id:app.user_id}
}).success(function(data, status, headers, config) {
// data gets returned here
var anchor = angular.element('<a/>');
angular.element(document.body).append(anchor); // Attach to document
anchor.attr({
href: 'data:attachment/csv;charset=utf-8,' + encodeURI(data),
target: '_blank',
download: 'myFileName.csv'
})[0].click(); // fire a click event.
anchor.remove(); // Clean it now ...
}).error(function(data, status, headers, config) {
$scope.status = status;
});