[TriLUG] Web server Research question

[Brian McCullough]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 01:24:26AM -0400, Joseph S. Tate wrote:
> "Content-disposition: attachment" is what you're looking for, but all that
> does is tells the browser to save a file instead of opening it "inline". If

I know.  That's what I am doing, already.


> the user's browser preference is just to save to Downloads, that's all it
> will do. There's no way to override the browser's behavior.

That was the conclusion that I had already reached, from my own
research.


> Instead instruct the user to right click the link and choose "save link as"
> (as labeled in Chrome, variations required for other browsers).

You know that we are talking about "real" people, not computer literate
people, right?


> But I think you have to think hard about WHY you want the user to choose
> where to save the file. The web is better for having a known "Downloads"
> folder. Instructions become so much simpler if you just say "download this
> file, and open your downloads folder and double click the thing."

Yes, had a conversation with the client several days ago, and was told
that they wanted to "automatically" store individual files in particular
directories in the ( Windows ) file system.

I suggested that perhaps some kind of local application ( PHP-cli, PERL,
whatever ) retrieve the PDF files from the server and place them in the
appropriate directories, in a batch process, would be the best solution.




> Joseph


Brian