My colleague Jason Porrit recently wrote about loading and processing files with Ember.js. Today, I’ll cover two techniques for going in the opposite direction: generating files with JavaScript in the browser. I used these techniques while working with Jason on an Ember.js app, so my examples are geared toward Ember.js, but the techniques themselves can be used with any JavaScript framework (or no framework at all).
In a typical web app, files are generated on a server and then downloaded by the browser (or other client). We decided to turn that idea on its head, shifting the responsibility to the browser. This was a clear win in the case of our Ember.js app because we already had nearly all of our presentation logic in the client-side JavaScript code. Our server is merely responsible for providing data upon request. It’s the responsibility of the client-side code to present that data to the user, whether in a web page or as a downloadable file.
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Two techniques for generating files with JavaScript and Ember.js, entirely in the browser.