Allow custom reports to be downloaded

[teajaymars]

Obviously this is difficult. I've sent this to IBP:

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Creating custom dataset downloads is a large problem. This tool runs in the browser; there is no server processing the data, so there is no server to download the files from.

• Option 1: I create a server. Expensive to write, expensive to maintain, and more difficult to host. Right now you can get away with serving static HTML, Javascript, Excel files; that would change and you'd need to maintain a server and monitor it for crashes, overloading etc.
• Option 2: I pre-define a few downloadable datasets. eg. You can download the dataset for any category you select. But you can't download a custom report. Very simple and cheap.
• Option 3: I use Flash. I generate the CSV or JSON file in the browser, and use a tiny in-browser Flash app to turn it into a file which you can "download" from your own computer. This is a hack, but simpler and cheaper than setting up a server. It will work with ~80% of browsers (possibly more). Creation of Excel .XLS files is impossible this way, only CSV and JSON.
• Option 4: There is a textarea textbox (like this email reply box) containing the CSV data. You have to click on it and copy/paste the data out. Simplest. Cheapest. Solves the problem. Again, this only works for CSV and JSON.

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Eagerly awaiting feedback.

[teajaymars]

Note: Option 3 refers to https://github.com/dcneiner/Downloadify

[teajaymars]

Comment from client:

1. For “option 3” (i.e., using the flash stuff for customized downloading): she is fine with it. It would be great, though, to add a Note (that can pop out when people click “download”, or just close to the button. With that people would then be aware that the download may not work on all browsers, etc. Maybe something around which browses would certainly work? Just to prepare people in case their download is not successful.

[teajaymars]

Done. Flash client and all.