html - How to set name of file downloaded from browser?

Question

I'm writing a web application that, among other things, allows users to upload files to my server. In order to prevent name clashes and to organize the files, I rename them once they are put on my server. By keeping track of the original file name I can communicate with the file's owner without them ever knowing I changed the file name on the back end. That is, until they go do download the file. In that case they're prompted to download a file with a unfamiliar name.

My question is, is there any way to specify the name of a file to be downloaded using just HTML? So a user uploads a file named 'abc.txt' and I rename it to 'xyz.txt', but when they download it I want the browser to save the file as 'abc.txt' by default. If this isn't possible with just HTML, is there any way to do it?

Answer 1

When they click a button to download the file, you can add the HTML5 attribute download where you can set the default filename.

That's what I did, when I created a xlsx file and the browser want to save it as zip file.

<a href="path/to/file" download="renamed.txt">Download</a>
<a href="downloads/export.xlsx" download="Data-Export.xlsx">Download Export</a>