Download a File Using JavaScript/jQuery? – Step-by-step with code

Using JavaScript/jQuery to download a file involves creating a link element and triggering a click event on it. Here are a few different ways to accomplish this task:

First way: Using Vanilla JS and <button> tag.

Step 1:

Create a link element with the desired file URL as the href and add it to the DOM

var link = document.createElement('a');
link.href = 'your-file-url';

Step 2:

Create a button element and add an event listener to it to trigger the click event on the link element when clicked.

var button = document.createElement('button');
button.innerHTML = 'Download';
button.addEventListener('click', function() {
    link.click();
});

Step 3:

Append the button to the DOM.

document.body.appendChild(button);

Conclusion:

Above code snippet is creating a link element, with the source of the file and then appending it to the DOM and then creating a button element and adding a click event listener to it, when the button is clicked it triggers the click event of the link element to download the file.

Second way: Using jQuery and <a> tag.

Step 1:

Create an <a> tag with the desired file URL as the href and add it to the DOM

var $link = $('<a>', {
    href: 'your-file-url',
    download: true
});

Step 2:

Append the <a> tag to the DOM.

$('body').append($link);

Step 3:

Trigger the click event on the <a> tag to start the download.

$link.click();

Conclusion:

Above code snippet is creating an <a> tag with the source of the file and then appending it to the DOM and then triggering the click event of the <a> tag to download the file.

Note: In both of the above examples, the file will begin downloading immediately when the link is clicked. If you want to create a more user-friendly experience, you can add some UI elements (like a progress bar) to show the download progress, or use a library like FileSaver.js to handle the download process more elegantly.