I've got an export functionality built into my site, whereby users can
choose which rows of a data table to export. They export by clicking
an "Actions" dropdown and choosing "Export". This triggers an AJAX
call that posts which ids to export to a PHP script, which, in turn,
builds an Excel document on the fly and delivers it to the user.
Here is my code:
<input type="checkbox" id="selected1" name="Interviews[]" value="21" /
>
<input type="checkbox" id="selected2" name="Interviews[]" value="22" /
>
...
inputs = [];
$("#dataTableBody input[id^=selected]:checked").each(function() {
inputs.push(this.name + '=' + escape(this.value));
});
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
data: inputs.join('&'),
url: "/gateway/excel.php",
success: function(){
return true;
},
error: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown){
return false;
}
});
In Firebug, I'm getting the data in TSV format, but I'm not being
presented the download dialog within my browser. If this was a
straight file download, I would link directly to it, but the file has
to be built dynamically. Can I set the dataType option in the ajax
call to be "file" or something? What are my options?
