Download video in the browser instead of playing it in a new tab [CORS]

Question

I have <a> and inside its href attribute, I've got a Video URL from a 3rd-party api, when clicking on that <a> the browser opens a New Tab and Play the video instead of Downloading it!

PROBLEM: What I need to achieve is to download the video directly after clicking on that <a> instead of playing it in a New Tab and force the user to Right Click then choose Save Video As option to download it manually... Just click on Download and the browser starts to download that video!

NOTE: I am building a JavaScript App, so I need a solution in JavaScript not PHP, it has to be working on all browsers as well...

EDIT: I tried the download attribute and it doesn't work, because it's Same-Origin Only!

UPDATE: The only solution I found was a +7 years old, it manipulates with the .htaccess file, you can check it at this CSS Tricks Article , it has a common issue, I can't have 2 links: Watch Video and Download Video using this solution... Many developers mentioned this bug there, but no one fixed it yet!

Answer 1

Since the endpoint supports CORS, you can use my file download lib to save the content instead of showing it.

download("http://distribution.bbb3d.renderfarming.net/video/mp4/bbb_sunflower_1080p_30fps_normal.mp4");

Online Demo: http://pagedemos.com/v84rawmzntzt/output/

Answer 2

you need to set headers such as Content-Disposition from the server as follows

  Content-Description: File Transfer
  Content-Type: application/octet-stream
  Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="filename.jpg"

to allow previewing and download you might append these headers depending on query parameter for example if the url has ?download , append these headers to tell the browser to download the file instead of viewing it.

Answer 3

• You can't change the header of the 3rd party server.

• You don't want to implement a server that could proxying the request and update the header.

The only solution I can see is download and handling the content in browser js with request or axios then propose it to user (but you have to keep it in memory which might not fit for large video)

Answer 4

As it is a Video URL from a 3rd-party api, you can resolve the problem in two ways:

1. Contact the api-provider, ask them to add the header "Content-Type: application/octet-stream".
2. Proxy the 3rd-party api, and add the header "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" in the proxy.

Yes, the key is to set content-type header in http response.

Answer 5

My best guess would be redirecting user to a separate page to force browser download the file instead of viewing it (image, video, pdf)

PHP Example using readfile function create a download.php file

<?php
$file = 'monkey.gif';

if (file_exists($file)) {
    header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
    header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
    header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.basename($file).'"');
    header('Expires: 0');
    header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
    header('Pragma: public');
    header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
    readfile($file);
    exit;
}
?>

Hope that helps.

Source