upload files to database...then download?

influx

Hi all, I just finished my upload script for my website for members of my site to come and upload documents, pictures, text files, etc.

As of now, I store five files, per user, in a database (MySQL) table called 'documents'. in that table, i store the file name, size, description, and type.

I successfully got my website to store all files in my database, now the only problem is how to download the file from the database.

How on earth can I make a link to download (not show it, but save it to hard drive) the file?

Thanks a lot!

-influx.

Pig

check out the user contributed notes of http://php.net/header regarding forcing downloads.

influx

Hi Pig,

I read through all the user-contributed notes on php.net, but still couldn't fix my problem...

As of now, here is what I have on my ul_download.php file:

<?php require "upload_213167312.php";?> //contains session_start
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>

<body>
<?php

$docid=addslashes($_GET['docid']);
$username=$_SESSION['username'];

if ($docid) {
	$res=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM documents WHERE d_username = '$username'");
	$row=mysql_fetch_array($res);
	$data=$row["d_doc".$docid];
	$name=$row["d_doc".$docid."_name"];
	$size=$row["d_doc".$docid."_size"];
	$type=$row["d_doc".$docid."_type"];


  header("Content-type: $type");
  header("Content-length: $size");
  header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$name");
  print $data; //this prints a bunch of gibberish if it's a picture file, and prints the text of a text file without nl2br
}
?>

</body>
</html>

what could possibly be wrong with this...when I like to this page, i send ?docid=3 for example, and it retrieves the document/picture without a problem, it just doesn't DOWNLOAD THE FILE as it is supposed to. I just want the user to be able to download the file.

Thanks!
-influx.

influx

bump!

bubblenut

Well firstly forum rules say no bump, you bad, tsk tsk 😉

Another point, you can't add to the headers (ie use the header function) after you've outputed stuff to the browser, it doesn't make sense and should through you some errors like "headers already sent". You must set the headers before anything is output.

HTH
Bubble

influx

thanks bubblenut...

However, I first have to retrieve the document size, type and name before I can utilize the header statements...meaning they cant be the first commands outputted.

How can I overcome this dilemma?

thanks!
-influx.

bubblenut

Ah no, you misunderstand, they don't have to be the first commands executed by php it's just that you cannot output data to the browser before you set the headers. All the dealing with the headers before data is output to the browser.

<?php 
require "upload_213167312.php";
//None of this stuff up here sends anything to output (echo, print etc)
$docid=addslashes($_GET['docid']);
$username=$_SESSION['username'];

if ($docid) {
    $res=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM documents WHERE d_username = '$username'");
    $row=mysql_fetch_array($res);
    $data=$row["d_doc".$docid];
    $name=$row["d_doc".$docid."_name"];
    $size=$row["d_doc".$docid."_size"];
    $type=$row["d_doc".$docid."_type"];


  header("Content-type: $type");
  header("Content-length: $size");
  header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$name");
  print $data; //this prints a bunch of gibberish if it's a picture file, and prints the text of a text file without nl2br
}
?>

HTH
Bubble

gagge

You can execute code before the headers, that's ok, but you can't output text.
You can't have echo's or html before the headers.