query results into a txt> d/l prompt

Anon

Greetings All-
I would love to know how to have the results from a table put into a text file, and automatically have a download prompt to save the file. I have read lots of documentation about working with text files to and from databases and such, but havent found anything in terms of how to handle making the download dialogue come about without making the user click a link. I would like the download prompt to be triggered according to conditions in an if statement. I would also like the records represented by this text file to be deleted from the database if the user does download the file.
Thanks for any guidance.

RoM_ServO

Anon

The server will only send a file to the browser in response to a request from the browser, so the browser has to initiate the process in some way. One suggestion would be some Javascript that requests a certain page on the occasion of some event (page load, mouse click, or whatever works for you).

On this page, as well as all the database-specific stuff, will be the lines

header("Content-type: application/octet-stream");
$attachment=(!strstr($HTTP_USER_AGENT,"Mozilla/4") ||
strstr($HTTP_USER_AGENT,"MSIE"))?' attachment;':'';
header("Content-Disposition:$attachment filename=$filename");
echo $text;

Which will cause the browser to bring up a download prompt to save a file called "$filename", which will contain the contents of the $text variable.

Hope this starts you off.

russian_god

Anon

Though this is no good if the file to be downloaded is a text file - the browser will just handle it itself (and display it) according to its own internal handler for that MIME type (text/plain).