Download and open PDF file using Ajax

Question

I have an action class that generates a PDF. The contentType is set appropriately.

public class MyAction extends ActionSupport 
{
   public String execute() {
    ...
    ...
    File report = signedPdfExporter.generateReport(xyzData, props);

    inputStream = new FileInputStream(report);
    contentDisposition = "attachment=\"" + report.getName() + "\"";
    contentType = "application/pdf";
    return SUCCESS;
   }
}

I call this action through an Ajax call. I don't know the way to deliver this stream to browser. I tried a few things but nothing worked.

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: url,
    data: wireIdList,
    cache: false,
    success: function(response)
    {
        alert('got response');
        window.open(response);
    },
    error: function (XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) 
    {
        alert('Error occurred while opening fax template' 
              + getAjaxErrorString(textStatus, errorThrown));
    }
});

The above gives the error:

Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.

Answer 1

Here is how I got this working

$.ajax({
  url: '<URL_TO_FILE>',
  success: function(data) {
    var blob=new Blob([data]);
    var link=document.createElement('a');
    link.href=window.URL.createObjectURL(blob);
    link.download="<FILENAME_TO_SAVE_WITH_EXTENSION>";
    link.click();
  }
});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Updated answer using download.js

$.ajax({
  url: '<URL_TO_FILE>',
  success: download.bind(true, "<FILENAME_TO_SAVE_WITH_EXTENSION>", "<FILE_MIME_TYPE>")
});