"Save As" popup in response to a POST request?

Question

Is it possible to get the browser to popup its Save As... dialog when doing a POST (rather than GET) request?

Using the Spring framework, I'm trying to build a service that will receive some data (a two-dimensional json array), and produce an Excel file that the user is prompted to download.

By doing a GET request, eg by browsing directly to my URL, I can get the browser to display the popup by setting headers similar to this:

response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=" + fileName)
response.setContentType("application/vnd.ms-excel")

I need to allow the client to post the data that will be used to build the Excel file though, which implies a POST request. The same headers are returned, but no popup.

Is there a way to achieve this, or does the popup appear only for GET requests? I'm thinking I could do a two-step process; 1) allow the client to POST the data, and return some sort of reference key, 2) allow the client to do a GET request and include the key, and return the relevant headers to cause the browser to popup the dialog.

Any other thoughts on how to do this?

Thanks

Answer 1

It's possible. I'm not sure what I did wrong the first time I tried it out.