How to retrieve HttpResponseMessage FileName in JavaScript

Question

I've this WebAPI method, that takes a custom object MyType as input and generate a PDF based on that. The PDF-file is returned as a HttpResponseMessage. Note that I specify the filename on response.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition.FileName:

ASP.NET WebAPI

[Route("")]
public HttpResponseMessage Get([FromUri]MyType input)
{
    var pdfContent = PdfGenerator.Generate(input);

    var response = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK);
    response.Content = pdfContent;
    response.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition = new System.Net.Http.Headers.ContentDispositionHeaderValue("attachment");
    response.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition.FileName = "MyCustomFileName.pdf"

    return response;
}

In AngularJS I fetch the file using FileSaver.js like this:

$http.get("api/pdf/", {
    params: {
        "type": myObject
    },
    responseType: 'arraybuffer'
}).then(function (results) {
    var data = results.data;

    var file = new Blob([data], { type: 'application/pdf' });
    saveAs(file, 'filename.pdf');
}, function (results) {
    console.log(results);
});

It works as excepted, but I'm defining the filename both on WebAPI and in the JavaScript. Is there a way, that I can retrieve the FileName defined in WebAPI in the results variable in JavaScript?

Solution

The promise returned by methods of $http are passed as argument an object with the following properties (ref):

• data – {string|Object} – The response body transformed with the transform functions.
• status – {number} – HTTP status code of the response.
• headers – {function([headerName])} – Header getter function.
• config – {Object} – The configuration object that was used to generate the request.
• statusText – {string} – HTTP status text of the response.

So results.headers('Content-Disposition') will gives you the value of the Content-Disposition header. You will have to do some trivial parsing to get to the actual filename.

Comments

[Jitender Kumar]

This above solution is not working in Chrome as it just return the headers Cache-Control and Content-Type. Here is my post for more detail stackoverflow.com/questions/39825590/…

[Nikos Paraskevopoulos]

The previous comment is wrong because, as it is obvious from the answer of the linked question, the problem in the question is not Chrome, but the fact that the request is CORS and it needs explicit permission to access headers.