PDF files over SSL connection

smellicus

Hi all,

I store my PDF files out of the website tree (in a directory under the public_html) and use a script to retrieve it and send it to the browser with the appropriate headers

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

Now this works fine in IE and Mozilla over HTTP but when I use it over an SSL connection, Mozilla is fine but IE cannot find the file to download.

What's up with that?

drawmack

If it's not in an ssl secured directory then any browser configured not to allow you to retrieve mixed content (ID by default MOzilla by choice) will not let you access any data that is not stored in an https folder or accessed via a non https connection.

I would through the pdf files into a database and use the script to retrieve and send them then you will never have a problem with file system permissions again.

smellicus

Thanks for the reply, I'm going to try it out.

smellicus

Actually I just found out the answer. It seems that if you use sessions in PHP with SSL, this problem arises.

Basically, you have to send more headers.

header("Content-Type: WHATEVER_YOU_LIKE");
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=\"excel.xls\"");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Pragma: public");

And it works great!