Downloading .txt and RTF file

nemonoman

Hi:
I am trying to download (not read) a text file to a user's desktop. I have set up .htaccess to treat txt as application/octet stream.

Mozilla-based browsers put up a 'download / save this file' type dialog, which is just what I want.

IE, however, opens the file in a browser window, which is what I DON'T want.

Even worse is files of type rtf. IE not only opens these files, it also recodes my RTF code to meet MS Word standards. Since these RTF files are destined for Pagemaker, which unfortunately MISREADS MS Word standard RTF code, I'm screwed twice.

I thought this was an unfixable behavior, but I just got a 'download/save' dialog on text file while using IE at the Macromedia website.

How do I get this to happen at MY site??

Thanks

Nemo

steadyguy

Try setting the Content-Type and Content-Disposition headers with header()

nemonoman

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't know how to implement what you suggest.
Can you please be more explicit? THANKS.

I create a page that has a link to the text file:

<a href=myfile.txt>click here to download</a>

I build that page with this code:

              header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");    // Date in the past
        header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT"); // always modified
        header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate");  // HTTP/1.1
        header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", FALSE);
        header("Pragma: no-cache");                          // HTTP/1.0
        echo '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">';
        echo "<! $publicationid, $portalid><html><head><meta http-equiv='imagetoolbar' content='no'><title>".myversion()."</title>";
        echo '<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">';

What do I need to do to try your suggested header() approach?
Thanks.

steadyguy

Though the headers you have there are not necessary in the case of a download, it looks like you already know how to use header() ...
In any case, send the Content-Type and Content-Disposition thus:

$contentType = 'whatever yours is';
$filename = 'yourfile's.name';
header("Content-Type: $contentType\n");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$filename");

Now all you need to do is send them the file:

readfile($filename);

nemonoman

OK, nearly got it. One more thing.

Do those header lines go where I echo the page that contains the link

<a href=myfile.txt>click here to download</a>

If not, where do I put them?

Thanks.

Nemo

steadyguy

Put it all in a script, then link to the script instead of the actual file.

nemonoman

Well this approach is VERY COOL and it sure downloads the file without IE trying to read it itself. I don't know if it can be modified to do what I want exactly:

I made the file downloadtest.php

<?
$contentType = 'rtf';
$filename = '../1727/02September.rtf';
header("Content-Type: $contentType\n");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$filename");
readfile($filename);
?>

When the download this file dialog appears, it shows the filename as 'downloadtest'. I'd like it to say: '02September.rtf'

(I hate to keep begging for more when I have already received so much. I rely on the good nature of my fellow PHP coders to forgive my greed of greater PHP knowledge.)

steadyguy

The Content-Type for .rtf files should be 'text/enriched', and for plaintext files, is 'text/plain'. I think that should fix the filename problem (I think) ... If you want to put this in a variable you can, but unless you're handling downloads for multiple filetypes, you don't really need to. There are lots of lists of MIME types (ie., Content-Type codes), but I've found this one to be really useful.