How to tell if user downloaded a file

poisa

Is there a way of knowing if the user downloaded a file?

I have a bunch of .zip files referenced with <a> tags. Is there a server side solution to knowing if the whole file got to the client? I mean using PHP. I've seen different versions of this using Java, but they were too complicated for my basic Java chops.

If there is no way of knowing this info, what would be the proper way of knowing if a user clicked on a specific link?

I have been suggested submiting a form inside an invisible frame via javascript and handling statistics that way, but that is too messy in my opinion. There is probably a more proper way of doing this.

Ceril

Originally posted by poisa
Is there a way of knowing if the user downloaded a file?

I have a bunch of .zip files referenced with <a> tags. Is there a server side solution to knowing if the whole file got to the client? I mean using PHP. I've seen different versions of this using Java, but they were too complicated for my basic Java chops.

If there is no way of knowing this info, what would be the proper way of knowing if a user clicked on a specific link?

I have been suggested submiting a form inside an invisible frame via javascript and handling statistics that way, but that is too messy in my opinion. There is probably a more proper way of doing this.

Umm... in theory you could do along thoose lines:

Place all zips somewhere.
all the links to the zips realy link to download.php?file=zipname.zip

download.php works this way:
Open the zip, and send it to the user.
If the entire file is sent, then in theory the zip has been sent in complete to the one who requested the download, else... dont register it as downloaded.

poisa

Ceril, thanks for the prompt reply.

What you are suggesting would require at some point, something like this:

$file = "somefile.zip";  

$path = "./" . $file; 
$fp = fopen($path,'rb'); 
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$file");  

header("Content-Type: " . filetype($path));  

header("Content-Length: " . filesize($path));  

fpassthru($path);

It doesn't seem to work with a lot of browsers. Do you know how to make this more compatible with browsers out there?