will-download is not emitted when URL is HTML pages

[dennyferra]

• Electron version: 0.37.5
• Operating system: Windows 10

When calling a window's webContents.downloadURL(URL) method if the specified URL returns a 404 the will-download event on webContents.session does not fire and instead a dialog pops up asking the user to save an html file (the contents of the 404 page).

Is this expected behavior and is there any event I can listen to or some other way to get around this? I'd like to handle the error differently if possible.

Thanks

[zcbenz]

It seems that the will-download event just doesn't fire when the URL is HTML pages.

[eternalharvest]

@zcbenz

I have same issue with electron version 11.1.0.
I want to know how to prevent opening save dialog when the server returns 404 not found.
But I don't know how to check the response status code...

mainWindow.webContents.downloadURL('https://example.com/404.html');

mainWindow.webContents.session.on('will-download', (event, item, webContents) => {
    if (/* check if response status code != 200) */) {
        event.preventDefault();
    }
});