First of all, your can't "hide/not public" a link in a web based technology (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) application. Downloads are handled by the client, so the Download/Link-URL must be public. You can try to "hide" protective params like e.g. IDs in the download URL by using a backend executed programming language like "PHP or node.js, etc.". In that way you can create hash URLs like http://www.myside.com/download/359FTBW!S3T387IHS to hide parameters like the recordId in your URL.
By knowing this, your solution is pretty easy. Just use the HTML attribute download like <a href="http://mydownloadurl" download>link text</a> to force the browser to download the href source. No ng-click is needed here. Unfortunately the download attribute is not supported by Safari browser. This doesn't realy matter while the browser is handling the download itself. Depending on the users system OS configuration the file will be downloaded or directly opened in a programm installed on that system. For example, a PDF file will be opened in a PDF Viewer if some pdf viewer application is available.
I wrote a Plunker which handles ng-href in a AngularJS controller $scope. I hope this is what you need.
Your controller:
var app = angular.module('plunker', []); app.controller('MainCtrl', function($scope) { $scope.fileHref = 'http://www.analysis.im/uploads/seminar/pdf-sample.pdf'; });
Your view:
<head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <title>AngularJS Plunker</title> <script> document.write('<base href="' + document.location + '" />'); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" /> <script data-require="[email protected]" src="https://code.angularjs.org/1.3.14/angular.js" data-semver="1.3.14"></script> <script src="app.js"></script> </head> <body ng-controller="MainCtrl"> <a ng-href="fileHref" download="yourFilename">Download</a> </body> </html>