2024-08-14
4030
#html
Glad Chinda
1855
Aug 14, 2024 â‹… 14 min read

Programmatically downloading files in the browser

Glad Chinda Full-stack web developer learning new hacks one day at a time. Web technology enthusiast. Hacking stuffs @theflutterwave.

Recent posts:

Fix over-caching with dynamic IO caching in Next.js 15

Next.js 15 caching overhaul: Fix overcaching with Dynamic IO and the use cache directive.

David Omotayo
Aug 6, 2025 â‹… 10 min read
LLMs are facing a QA crisis here’s how we could solve it

LLMs are facing a QA crisis: Here’s how we could solve it

LLM QA isn’t just a tooling gap — it’s a fundamental shift in how we think about software reliability.

Rosario De Chiara
Aug 4, 2025 â‹… 7 min read

Windsurf vs. Cursor: When to choose the challenger

Windsurf AI brings agentic coding and terminal control right into your IDE. We compare it to Cursor, explore its features, and build a real frontend project.

Chizaram Ken
Jul 31, 2025 â‹… 9 min read

The CSS if() function: Conditional styling will never be the same

The CSS Working Group has approved the if() function for development, a feature that promises to bring true conditional styling directly to our stylesheets.

Ikeh Akinyemi
Jul 30, 2025 â‹… 12 min read
View all posts

5 Replies to "Programmatically downloading files in the browser"

  1. Hello. Great article! One comment though: in the function `downloadBlob` you declare a `clickHandler` that gets a value of an arrow function, which uses the `this` keyword. Since arrow functions do not have `this`, and you use `this` in a `setTimeout` callback function — it ends up being `undefined`, which throws when you perform the `.` operator on it (to call the `removeEventListener` method).
    Thanks for the article!
    Eran

  2. Hi Eran, thanks for pointing that out. That was an error on my part.

    The `clickHandler` function is supposed to be a regular JS function as opposed to an arrow function — that way, it would have the correct `this` binding internally (the target element) when it is eventually used as an event listener callback. If you notice in the subsequent Codepen snippets, you’d observe that the `clickHandler` function was defined as a regular function instead of as an arrow function.

    Thanks again for spotting that out.

Leave a Reply