PHP Equal to this Perl Code - Reading a PDF file

sdonley

I'm trying to create a PHP file that will read a pdf and write it out to the browser without giving the user the link to the file. This is an electronic book for download after payment has been received therefore I don't want the link to appear. Here is some code I found in Perl that would do the trip, but I don't want to have to revert to this method. Can someone please give me an equivelant in PHP, I would greatly appreciate it.

print "Content-type: application/pdf\n\n";
$file = "myfile.pdf";
open(SRC, "$file") or die "Can't open file";
binmode(SRC);
while(my $a = <SRC>){
print $a;
}

sarahk

Can't help I'm afraid but I'm looking for a perl forum that's the equivalent of PHP Builder (ie Awesome). Do you know of any?

jesus_hairdo

Try this:

<?
header('Content-type: application/pdf');
readfile($filename);
exit;
?>

The header line tells the browser what MIME type to expect.
Readfile, just passes the contents of the file $filename without processing it in any way.
Exit does just that, ends the script.

sdonley

Thanks jesus_hairdo...

The did the trick. Actually... this put the final touches on an e-commerce site for electronic downloads. If I put the PDF file in the cgi-bin directory, it cannot be browsed, but with your method...

Not only will it read it from the cgi-bin, but it also hides the file name.

Again thanks.