the weird question...

vaska

i have this dilemma, which i'm trying to understand involving a link, a php file and what happens when i click...

the link = <a href="xls.php">Link</a>

the php file has NO html in it. actually, it creates and excel file and puts it on the users desktop.

what i don't understand now is this...

when i click on the link it gets the file and puts it on the desktop. now, why is the page not refreshing? (actually, i don't want it to, but i don't want to write stupid code for this).

is it because no html is being passed and the xls.php file has a bunch of header information that ends up going straight to the desktop?

this is my best guest. as i mentioned, is this the correct way to do this? it seems to be working very nicely, but it doesn't seem completely logical to me...

???...v

sarahk

Hi Vaska,

You're right about the headers telling the browser not to change the content. I'm not sure how they are opening excel but it'll be in that php file.

I'm guessing you don't have access to it. it is likely to be a version of this:

http://www.ousob.com/hlf.php?fFile=xls.php

vaska

hi sarah,

actually...i wrote my own xls.php file...which works great...

i'm still curious though if what i'm doing is logically correct? uh, maybe that's some kind of oxymoron there...

however, i think you are telling me that it is...because if there is no html and the headers are outputting to desktop before outputting to the browser, then "yes", it is logical.

thanks...v