problem downloading files from MySQL Blob field

Andrew_Gianni

I have created a site that allows users to upload and download files. The backend is a MySQL database that uses a BLOB field to store the files. I'm using the Content-Disposition header to force the browser to query the user downloading the file as to whether they want to download or open the file directly. This works fine if they just select save and download the file to their computer. The problem comes if they just select open. If a user selects this option, the browser acts as if it is downloading the file, fires up the file viewer (in this case PDF reader) but then reports that the file doesn't exist.

I am using the following header attributes:

header("Content-type: $content_type");
header("Content-length: ".strlen($tune));
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$file_name");
header("Content-Description: PHP Generated Data");

Please check out this functionality on this page:

http://www.originaltraditional.net/search/tune_info.php/68

Select [download] next to the file name to test the behavior.

Any ideas?

Andrew

TTT

k... what's the problem, seems to be ok with ie6

btw... why do you want store so large files in your db?? there is hoting providers who has limited mysql size, and always your hd capacity is bigger than max siza of mysql. also there might be situation that mysql is on different pc that web server, then data has to be tranfered from other pc to other and futher to client - and if you store file on web server, you just query path and get file from web server.

Main reason why you should not do this is that you cause lot of extra traffic between mysql and web server.

bastien

Note that DB servers don't actually store file in the db, they create a pointer which points to a virtual file where the folder is stored. So why not create afolder and simply store the filename?

Andrew_Gianni

Hmmm... I'm using IE6 and it's causing problems for me. I just did it with Mozilla and it worked fine, though.

As far as the database or not issue, my host doesn't space a specific limit on the size of the database, it's just part of my quota as a whole so it doesn't place any artifical limits on the number of files that can be uploaded. As for as performance is concerned, I don't expect the site to do a tremendous amount of volume, so I'm not expecting that to be an issue.

I don't really want to just plunk the files in a directory myself because I don't want to deal with file naming problems; if two users try to upload a file with the same name. I know it's unlikely, but it's a possability. So given that I might have to rename files anyway and I don't want to make users to download files with gobbledygook names, I would run into the same trouble with the file download.

So, I know that some of you have tried this on IE 6 and it works, but is anyone else encountering this problem or does anyone have any advice on getting this to work?

Andrew

bastien

header("Content-type: application/application/save");