Create a download link

[john]

Hello,

I am trying to create a link so users can download a file from my project. I created the link like this:

Which resulted in this:

Yet when the link is clicked, the file opens in the browser.

What am I doing wrong?

[m.finamor]

Hello @john

Add the following parameters to the asset URL:

?dl=assetexample.pdf

That would make the url be

https://www.datocms-assets.com/58581/1640218505-assetexample.pdf?dl=assetexample.pdf

This will create a download link for that asset, not a “visualisation link”

The download attribute on the anchor tag is unnecessary, as it doesn’t support CORS download requests

Let me know if this helps!

[john]

@m.finamor

dl=assetexample.pdf

Bingo! Thank you!

An extension to this question: can you direct me to documentation on how to create a link that is expires, or requires a user to be logged in / have an account / etc?

[m.finamor]

We don’t have a native solution for that, sorry, but it’s something you can do on your server-side with something like this: files-temp-urls - npm
Or if you prefer you can also implement your own solution

[john]

Thank you Marcelo!

[mvengelshoven]

It would be great to be able to get download urls generated in grapql. So I don’t need to put these assumptions to my project.

I would like to propose a download parameter for the url field of FileField:

query {
    upload(filter: {filename: {matches: {pattern: "some-file.pdf"}}}) {
        url(download: "Some File Name.pdf")
    }
}

What do you think?

[m.finamor]

Hello @mvengelshoven

It does seem like a good suggestion to me, i’ll let the dev team know and see if we can do something about it

[s.verna]

You can already do this:

{
  upload {
    url(imgixParams:{ dl: "Some File Name.pdf" })
  }
}

[mvengelshoven]

Never thought about looking into imgixParams for the download link. But, as I see just now, the download links are an imgix feature, now this makes sense to me.

Thank you!