Hi everyone. I am looking for a stack that my users can utilize to download a PDF file. Some of the artists customers would prefer to download a PDF file and fill it out by hand as opposed to typing it in our website. So I need to get some type of stack or someone can download a PDF form and print it and mail it in. Can someone help me find a good downloader stack? I tried true download 2 from DooBox, but I got no luck with that.
@gmedlock Why did the True Download stack not work for you?
One approach is
- on Mac OS to right-click on the PDF, or folder of PDFs, that you want to download
- choose compress (this will make it a zip file/folder
- upload file to your server (I create a dedicated folder with a name like “downloads”)
- get the URL of the compressed file (most FTP apps will do this easily)
- within Foundry create a link, or a button and use the copied URL as your link address
- this will result in auto-downloading when user clicks on link or button
You can always try putting the zipped file/folder in RW resources and creating a link to that. It’s not an approach I use but it should work fine.
I’m guessing at all of this as the True Download stack you mentioned works fine. So I don’t know what step in the process caused a problem for you.
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I used Download 2 in Foundry 2 and it worked fine. I just used with Foundry 3 and it doesn’t work.
Did you ever find a resolution?
……oh I think it needs to be a zip file!
@stevec On the True Download stack it states:
Works perfectly fine with Zip files. Does not work for me with PDFs (the counter goes up 1 indicating a download, but download does not actually happen). I think the PDF statement is either a typo or stack needs to updated. Don’t know which. At any rate, I’ve always used Zip files only so did not notice this PDF anomoly until now.
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@gmedlock @stevec Just checked the Doobox website and it states the download file needs to be in a Zip format. Doobox writes:
Point the stack at a zip file, and start keeping count.
So zip (compress) the PDF first, then all should work fine.
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That worked. Thanks.
But another thing, when I bought this product, it said that you could download PDF files. As a matter of fact, on the settings, it gives me the option to use PDF files. It sounds to me like there’s a glitch in the code.
The problem is not everyone uses a Mac. Whenever someone clicks on this file, it downloads it up into a download in the browser, and I am working with art people and they’re just not that text savvy. They would like to be able to click on the button and it pops up the file in a PDF format on the screen. How do I make that happen?
If I’m understanding you correctly, then don’t zip anything. Upload your PDF(s) to a location on your hosting site … make a dedicated sub-folder to place them in. Then copy the link to the PDF. Once you have that link then you can use anything in Foundry 3 that will allow you to “connect” to things. The most obvious would be to use one of the button stacks. Or you could just use this code (as one example only)
<a href="https://full-url-path-here" class="btn btn-primary">text for button</a>
I don’t think you need to upload to your server directly, you can do within RW. I just don’t remember those details as I always upload my stuff to a server. But that’s not the only way to do things.
In the end, there are 2 ways to handle PDFs:
- zip the PDF and create a link to that zip file. This will result in the file being downloaded to their computer
- keep the PDF as a PDF (with the pdf extension) and create a link to that PDF. This will result in the PDF showing up directly in their browser.
I hope this all makes sense. Typing quickly as I’m leaving for a meeting.