[Resolved] how can i do a file transfer using php?

lsobrino

hi guys!

thanks to all of you for the previuos messages you have sent me. because of those, i have learned a little bit more every day. and it's because of you all! ;o)

i have a new challenge this time...

i have an application in which the user enters (in a starting screen) selection criteria to choose some records. the idea is to select data from differente mysql tables and then move all of the resulting records to a "plain" text file (could be a regular txt file or a csv file).

once this file is generated (in the server side), i need to move it somehow to the client for further processing via an excel macro.

the quesitons here are:

1) can i dump (convert) from the mysql table into a local (client) file instead of doing it to a server-side file?

2) if the answer to the prevfious quesiton is no, once i have the file in the server, how can i move it to the client-side with the minimum user effort? at the most, the user might say the location and name of the file.

thanks again for the previuos messages and hope this one is a piece of cake for you. bye...

ereptur

The answer to the first question is no. That's considered a security no no.

The answer to the second question is this,
dump your table to a file. This is pretty easily done if you are just wanting to dump the file, or if you are wanting a csv file or just about anything else.

Here's an example:

$query = "SELECT author,title,isbn FROM authors,books WHERE author='4'";
$result = mysql_query($query);
$temp_file = "6346272729.txt";
$fp = fopen($temp_file,"w");
while(list($author,$title,$isbn) = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
   fwrite($fp,"$author,$title,$isbn");  // this is pretty much a csv file
}
fclose($fp);

header("Location: sendtoclient.php?file=$temp_file");

sendtoclient.php

header("Content-Type: text/plain");
header("attached: $file");

You may want to check on the header("attached" line... I'm not sure that is correct, but if I am correct this will initiate a download of your temp_file that you created on the previous script so that the user is prompted to download the file like any other download.

You can then add some clean up code that destroys the file once they are done.

lsobrino

Ereptur:

the "header("attached..." does not initiate the file transfer. i'll check in order to see if this is the correct option...

thanks and i'll keep you informed!

lsobrino

Ereptur:

this is the code i finally used to do the file download to the client. hope it helps for future posts regarding the same issue... ;o)

header("Content-type: text/plain");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=filname.ext");
readfile('/path/filname.ext');

thanks a lot for the help!