Setting a $_GET value and opening a new link on href click

Question

so in my website I'm trying to set up a little button where when you click it, it'll refresh the page to edit the url so a $_GET value will be set but the button will also open another page.

Here's the PHP code for getting the value:

<?php
if (isset($_GET['download'])) {
    $downloadingFile = true;
  }
?>

For the button I guessed and tried this but it didnt work:

<a href="newpage.html" target=_blank href="thispage.php?download=true">download!</a>

Does anyone know how to do this? I'd prefer to not mess too much with AJAX/Java and just stick with HTML/PHP but if that's not possible I'm open for taking the working solution

Answer 1

You can't really do that with just php that I can think of off the top of my head but it's fairly easy with jQuery / Javascript. I will notate so at least you know what things are doing:

// When page is finished loading
$(document).ready(function () {
    // When you click a link
    $('a').click(function(e) {
        // Take the event and stop it's natural action
        // (stops link from working)
        e.preventDefault();
        // assign the data attribute from the link
        var getData =   $(this).data('loadnew');
        // Open a new browser window
        window.open(getData,'_blank');
        // Reload this page using the href
        window.location =   $(this).attr("href");
    });
});
</script>

<a target="_blank" href="/this_page.php?download=true" data-loadnew='new_page.php'>download!</a>