PDF Download

gecko498

I've read through the various threads here, and the info on php.net, but I've yet to come up with working code to request a PDF download. Every code I've tried simply outputs the PDF source in the browser. Is there something wrong with this code?

header("Content-type: application/pdf");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$file");
readfile("$file");

I believe that was right from php.net

Cheers

rheroux

Try this instead.


<?php
$attachment = (strstr($HTTP_USER_AGENT, "MSIE")) ? "" : " attachment"; // IE 5.5 fix.
$hd = fopen("test.php", "rb");
$string = fpassthru($hd);
  header("Cache-control: private"); // another fix for IE
  header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
  header("Content-Length: ".strlen($string));
  header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=test.php");
?>

Just replace test.php with the file you want to download.

gecko498

Well, we're getting there! That forced a download prompt, but the file to download was "download.html", which turned out to be the same pdf source code, saved as an html file. The script is download.php, so I'm guessing that's where it got the name.

Sounds like it's really close, and we're down to a file type issue.

gecko498

Originally posted by gecko498
Well, we're getting there! That forced a download prompt, but the file to download was "download.html", which turned out to be the same pdf source code, saved as an html file. The script is download.php, so I'm guessing that's where it got the name.

Sounds like it's really close, and we're down to a file type issue.

Ah, something else, if I manually enter the file name with the pdf extension in the save prompt it opens properly as a pdf.

rheroux

Oops, I screwed up the order a little bit. Adding the Content-transfer-encoding header always helps too.

I tested this out locally and it worked fine.


<?php
//$attachment = (strstr($HTTP_USER_AGENT, "MSIE")) ? "" : " attachment"; // IE 5.5 fix.
$file = "bg.pdf";
  header("Cache-control: private"); // another fix for IE
  header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
  header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=bg.pdf");
  header("Content-transfer-encoding: binary");
  header("Content-length: " . filesize($file));
$hd = fopen($file,"rb");
fpassthru($hd);
?>

gecko498

Originally posted by rheroux
Oops, I screwed up the order a little bit. Adding the Content-transfer-encoding header always helps too.

I tested this out locally and it worked fine.


<?php
//$attachment = (strstr($HTTP_USER_AGENT, "MSIE")) ? "" : " attachment"; // IE 5.5 fix.
$file = "bg.pdf";
  header("Cache-control: private"); // another fix for IE
  header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
  header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=bg.pdf");
  header("Content-transfer-encoding: binary");
  header("Content-length: " . filesize($file));
$hd = fopen($file,"rb");
fpassthru($hd);
?>

[/B]

Superb! Thanks very much. I thought the order looked a little funny 🙂