How to build download link pointing to my own view

[MShekow]

Hi. I've built a view (defined with http_pass_through=True in routes.py) that serves files that the user wants to download. This download-view computes the file content on-demand (I am aware that for static file serving, there are better alternatives, like using a proper HTTP server such as Apache).

In another view, I'm trying to have a clickable link (A) that will download the file from my download view.

What does not work well is to define something like A("download", href="my-download-view/") because that will trigger a view switch, which I don't want.

If I do something like A("download", href="my-download-view/", events=[CLICK]) then the unwanted view-switch no longer occurs, but then a normal click simply does nothing. The user has to either force opening the link in a new tab (and has to do it themselves e.g. via shift+click, because something like A(... target="_blank" ...) does not open a new tab for unknown reasons), or they have to right-click -> download the link.

How can I achieve that a simple, single click on the link triggers the download?

[fscherf]

@MShekow what you are searching for is interactive. You can tell the javascript client to not change the behavior of links by setting interactive to False

A('foo', href='/foo.pdf', interactive=False)

[MShekow]

Thank you, that worked.

[MShekow]

I found another small problem: once the user clicks on a download link (created with interactive=False) Lona no longer handles any (interactive) follow-up link-clicks anymore.

[fscherf]

Oh! That sounds like a bug. Do you have a reproducer for that?

[MShekow]

Ahh, I found that the problem is that my browser simply terminates all connections (including lona's websocket) when clicking on a download link. The problem is solved via something like A('foo', href='/foo.pdf', interactive=False, target='_blank').

[fscherf]

Ah ok. Maybe that's something for the documentation

[MShekow]

Maybe you could simply add a third example to https://lona-web.org/end-user-documentation/html.html#links e.g.

# internal link to a non-interactive (or HTTP-pass-through) view that serves a downloadable file.
# Without "target='_blank'", the browser would try to download the file in the current browser
# tab, terminating the websocket connection, which would break the currently opened, interactive view
A('Internal download Link', href='/internal-download-link/', interactive=False, target='_blank')

[fscherf]

@MShekow Great! Thanks for that, i will add it to the documentation

Edit: It's rolled out to lona-web.org