AWS s3 file downloads not working in Chrome specifically

Question

S3 holds my PDf files. Each time I try downloading these. I get nothing. This download however is possible on other browsers. My console gives error 'Resource interpreted as other but transferred with MIME type undefined.'

I have one thread on AWS. I can’t tell users to go & disable this plugin & then download.

Is it a problem from AWS end?

Answer 1

Force Chrome to download the PDF file instead of trying to open it in its reader.

In your GET request, append response-content-disposition=attachment. Refer this:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/RESTObjectGET.html

Answer 2

The canonical Internet media type for a PDF document is actually application/pdf as defined in The application/pdf Media Type (RFC 3778) - please note that application/x-pdf, while commonly encountered and listed as a media type in Portable Document Format as well, is notably absent from the official Application Media Types listed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

I'm not aware of why and when application/x-pdf came to life, but apparently the Chrome PDF Plugin does not open application/x-pdf documents as of today.

Consequently you should be able to trigger a different behavior in Chrome by changing the media type of the stored objects accordingly.

Alternative (for authenticated requests)

Another approach would be to Force a PDF to download instead of letting Chrome attempt to open it, which can be done by means of triggering the Content-Diposition: attachment header with your GET request - please see the S3 documentation for GET Object on how to achieve this via the response-content-disposition request parameter, specifically response-content-disposition=attachment as demonstrated there in section Sample Request with Parameters Altering Response Header Values.