Adding a download link with perl CGI

orangepeel1 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I couldn't find any documentation in the CGI module but I have data from a form that I'm processing with a perl cgi script. Is there any way to create a downloadable link to a file created from this data using perl cgi or do I need to strictly use html?

Comment on Adding a download link with perl CGI

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Re: Adding a download link with perl CGI by Corion (Patriarch) on Mar 31, 2017 at 17:21 UTC
I don't know what you mean by "strictly use html", but if you want to send a file for the user to download, you just send the appropriate headers and then the file content. The appropriate headers are `Content-Type` and `Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="example.csv"`. With CGI, sending headers is basically: `print $cgi->header( -type => 'text/csv', -Content_disposition => qq{attachment; filename="$target.csv"}, );` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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Re: Adding a download link with perl CGI
by Corion (Patriarch) on Mar 31, 2017 at 17:21 UTC

I don't know what you mean by "strictly use html", but if you want to send a file for the user to download, you just send the appropriate headers and then the file content. The appropriate headers are Content-Type and Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="example.csv".

With CGI, sending headers is basically:

print $cgi->header(
    -type => 'text/csv',
    -Content_disposition => qq{attachment; filename="$target.csv"},
);
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