Is it possible to force a download through JS or Javascript i-e the web page should not open the file in new tab in the browser but to pop up to let the user to choose eith "save as" or open with ???
With the advent of HTML5 you could just use the new property download in the anchor tag.
The code will look something like
<a download="name_of_downloaded_file" href="path/to/the/download/file"> Clicking on this link will force download the file</a>
It works on firefox and chrome latest version. Should I mention that I didn't check it in IE? :P
Edited the download attribute after comment from sstur
dynamic create link and click it with download attribute for force download as file:
var anchor = document.createElement('a');
anchor.href = this.props.download_url;
anchor.target = '_blank';
anchor.download = this.props.file_name;
anchor.click();
Take a notice that i didn't even added it to DOM, so it's fast.
P.S download attribute won't work with IE. But it will just open link in new tab.
http://caniuse.com/#feat=download
You can not force that behavior from JavaScript, the HTTP Headers need to be set on the server side:
Content-disposition=attachment; filename=some.file.name
The way you can solve the problem is to let your AJAX method redirect the user to the URL of the PDF:
location.replace('path/to.pdf');
(The above HTTP headers must be set for the PDF)
Update
At the time of this answer, it wasn't possible. Now it is, scroll down to see the other answer saying so.