Downloading PDF

rakennedy75

I have some pdf files I am downloading and I want to force these to download. Basically I would like to side step the plugin built into the users browser which pulls the pdf into the web page.

Is there anyway I can do this with php?

Thanks for your time

sarahk

I'd be interested to see the answers to this. I've always just put an instruction to the user to right click and choose "save target as".

dta

heres a small page i use to handle most of my downloads

<?
//validate the file up here
//unless you want to give free-range
//to all files

$shortname=basename($file);
$size=filesize($file);
//set header
header("Content-Type: application/save");
header("Content-Length: $size");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$shortname");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
//start transfer
$handler=fopen("$file","r");
fpassthru($handler);
exit;
?>

works fine-but be careful to control what they are allowed to download, to run it like downloads.com (meaning, it starts automatically, AND has a link if it doesnt) just throw the download.php?file=THEFILE link in an IFRAME while the rest serves as a normal page with the normal rt-click/save as link

hope this helps
-r

sarahk

Thanks DTA

I'll try that. I have a more advanced version for my .exe download and I'll try this for the pdf.

I also hadn't used the iframe option. I use javascript

<script language="JavaScript">
var deliver = "window.location = '/v2/deliver.php?file=pcpmdemo'";
setTimeout(deliver,10000);
</script>

and this causes no flicker on the window and the download starts automatically.

Because the javascript is at the bottom of the page and there is a timeout the page loads fully.

All of the graphics on the page are cached from the previous page so it should load quickly anyway.

Sarah

rakennedy75

Thanks for the replies, worked perfectly, I appreciate the help

sarahk

Just incase anyone finds this through a search sometime I just thought I'd add a one more thing.

If the file is readonly - change the chmod settings to 444.