Download PDF documents

How to make PDF available for downloading

[numbrel]

The nonprofit I work with wants to make documents available for downloading. What goes into making this happen?

Thanks

[coopster]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, numbrel.

All you have to do is move them to a directory in the public side of your web site and link to them in your html page(s). Unless, of course, they are secured and the user has to authenticate first before retrieving the document(s). Then you will need to use some form of server-side authentication prior to reading the file and pushing it out to the browser.

[Mr Bo Jangles]

but how do you force them to download directly and not open up the adobe reader?

[coopster]

That truly should be their decision, not yours. It can be done, however, by sending the appropriate Content-Disposition.

[rakesh mosaic]

when someone tries to download a file from the net, user has the option of either open it from the current location or store it on their computer for later use.

So it is totally user's choice.

[victor]

What happens when they click the *.pdf link is also partially dependent on what browser they are using. Modern ones, as mentioned above are likely to offer to open or save the file). Older ones may offer only downoad.

You can't enforce a download. Unless you restrict users to specific and elderly browsers. That may be an option for an in-house application.

[katana_one]

While it should be the user's choice to download or open a PDF from its location on the Net, that is not how it actually works with the Acrobat Reader plugin. Acrobat Reader is launched within the browser window and the PDF opened automatically by default when a link to a PDF is clicked. The user has to right-click on the link in order to choose to download without opening.

Many average web users are not aware of this option.

This applies to Windows and IE - not sure how it works in other OS/browser environments.

I usually mark all PDF files clearly as such, and also include some text stating that right-clicking is recommended in order to save the file to the user's system. Beyond that, I don't know how to force a PDF download and would be interested in hearing options.

[Sanenet]

Never tried it... but if you made the link an FTP option, wouldn't that bypass the pdf reader and open up a download box?

[coopster]

Mozilla-based browsers allow you to manage your own plug-ins so you can choose whether or not to download or open documents -- you control it as the user.

MS IE has Internet Options -> Programs Tab -> Manage Add-ons where you can do the same (well, in the 6.0.2900 srv pk 2 at least).

You can *force* a browser to download by sending the correct Content Disposition as I mentioned before. These headers need to be sent from the server-side. See RFC 2183 for more information.