Text file download link (ruby on rails)

I want to add a download link to my html page. Download will be a .txt file. I have done this,

<a href="path_to_file/myfile.txt">click to download txt </a>

But the problem is, when a user clicks this link, instead of asking user to download the file, it simply shows the text in the browser.

How can I change this script to ask开发者_如何学编程 user to download the file (with the default download prompt dialog box)

UPDATE: Thanks all for the replies. I'm using ruby/rails on the server side.

Use rails send_file method

Didn't you forget set wright content-header at server side:

header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"myfile.txt\"");

1. simple way - zip it.
2. if is available php

header ( 'Content-Type: text/html');
header ( "Content-Disposition: 'attachment'; filename='text.txt'" );
include ('path_to_file/myfile.txt')
exit;

You can do this in .htaccess

1. If you want only for this specific file:

<Directory path_to_file>
    <Files myfile.txt>
        <IfModule mod_headers.c>
            ForceType application/octet-stream
            Header set Content-Disposition attachment
        </IfModule>
    </Files>
</Directory>

2. If you want it to be for all the .txt files under path_to_file

<Directory path_to_file>
    <FilesMatch “.(?i:(txt))$”>
        <IfModule mod_headers.c>
            ForceType application/octet-stream
            Header set Content-Disposition attachment
        </IfModule>
    </FilesMatch>
</Directory>

View : (Html file)

= link_to 'click to download txt', :controller => 'download', :action => 'test'

Download Controller :

def test file_path = 'path_to_file/myfile.txt' send_file file_path end

If your server supports php, you could use these lines:

header('Content-type: text/plain');
header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename="name.txt"');
readfile('name.txt');

Also see PHP: header Example #1