Possible Duplicate:
Forcing to download a file using PHP
When we need to force user to download a file, we use header with several parameters/options. What if I use
header("location:test.xlsx");
This is working :) Is there any drawback of using this shortcut ?
This approach should solve the problems mentioned here
download.php?filename=test.xlsx
if isset ($_GET['filename']){
$filename = $_GET['filename']
}
else{
die();
}
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.basename($file));
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
header('Pragma: public');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
ob_clean();
flush();
readfile($file);
And of course don't forget to secure this so users can't download other files
There are a few disadvantages to this method:
If the file is one the browser can read, it won't be downloaded (like .txt, .pdf, .html, .jpg, .png, .gif and more), but simply be shown within the browser
Users get the direct link to the file. Quite often, you don't want this because they can give this link to others, so...
All you're doing is redirecting to a file. This is no different than if they went to it directly.
If you are trying to force a download, you need to set your Content-Disposition header appropriately.
header('Content-Disposition: attachment');
Note that you can't use this header when redirecting... this header must be sent with the file contents. See also: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3719029/362536
