Using Processors to download files

I was talking to Nthumma about a problem. It was the need for a custom XML file for each incident. I knew of a way to do this, but it's old. Enter Processors.

If you ever have a need to make something auto-download, that would seem pretty difficult as you need to set headers as mentioned here on StackOverlow.

With processors this is a non-issue. Here's how to do it.

// Processor code
(function process(g_request, g_response, g_processor) {
    try{
    var filter = g_request.getParameter("filterQuery");
    var fileName = filter + '.xml';
    var contentType = 'xml/plain';
    var fileContent = '';
    var incident = new GlideRecord('incident');
    incident.addEncodedQuery(filter);
    incident.query();
    fileContent+='<root>';
    while(incident.next()) {
        //generate XML format
        fileContent+='<record>';
        fileContent+='<message-type>'+ incident.getValue('short_description')+'</message-type>';
        fileContent+='</record>';
    }
    fileContent+='</root>';
    if(contentType == 'xml/plain'){
        fileContent = new XMLDocument(fileContent);
    }
    g_response.addHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment;filename=' + fileName);
    g_processor.writeOutput(contentType,fileContent);
    } catch(error){
        g_processor.writeOutput('text/html',error);
    }
})(g_request, g_response, g_processor);

UI Action

// Client side ui action
downloadXML();
function downloadXML() {
    var sysparm_query = g_list.getQuery({orderby: true, fixed: true});
    var url = '/customprocessor.do?filterQuery='+sysparm_query;
    window.open(url, "_blank");
}

Thanks Nthumma for the idea to make this post and the code above.

Further Reading;