download file using header() BROKEN in IE

mpotvin

I've been surfing this up for days now. It appears to be an old problem. I want a user to click on a link to start the download of a file. The code below works in IE only if you comment out the session_start() line. It works either way in Netscape/Mozilla. I have tried every header setting imaginable to get IE to download as a file with no luck. IE offers to download a file with the same name as the php script (download.php) but reports an error when you actually try to accept that file name. any help would be appreciated.

<?
session_start();

header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Length: 5");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"foo.txt.gz\"");

echo "hello";
?>

Various things I've tried with no success:

header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");
header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");

header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate");
header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);

header("Pragma: no-cache");

header("Cache-control: public");

header("Cache-control: private");

goldbug

Why do you need session_start() in there?

mpotvin

Originally posted by goldbug
Why do you need session_start() in there?

The sample script I posted doesn't really need it, but my actual script does (to determine if the user is allowed to download the file, etc).

YappyDog

This sounds similar to a bug I ran into in MS IE 5.5. You don't say which version of IE you are using. It might be worth a shot. Basically, you are getting rid of the "attachment;" in one of your headers.

// Special adjustment to fix bug in IE 5.5
if(eregi("MSIE 5.5",$SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"]))
$attachment = " ";
else
$attachment = "attachment;";
$outfile = strtolower($table) . "" . date("mdy") . "_export.txt";
Header("Content-type: application/unknown");
Header("Content-Disposition: $attachment filename=$outfile");
Header("Content-Description: Database Export");

mpotvin

Originally posted by YappyDog
This sounds similar to a bug I ran into in MS IE 5.5. You don't say which version of IE you are using. It might be worth a shot. Basically, you are getting rid of the "attachment;" in one of your headers.

// Special adjustment to fix bug in IE 5.5
if(eregi("MSIE 5.5",$SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"]))
$attachment = " ";
else
$attachment = "attachment;";
$outfile = strtolower($table) . "" . date("mdy") . "_export.txt";
Header("Content-type: application/unknown");
Header("Content-Disposition: $attachment filename=$outfile");
Header("Content-Description: Database Export");

I'm using IE 6. I've tried with and without the "attachment;" part, but still no luck 🙁

Thanks