Streaming file to the browser without writing it to the filesystem?

ajuly

I realise it might be a strange question (I know you can do it with .NET) but is it possible to sream a file (dinamically generated csv or pdf or whatever) to the browser without writing it to the filesystem?
How would you do it?
Any help would be much appreciated.

Roger_Ramjet

Yes it is. Have a look at the PDF functions , there is an example on the main page for creating a pdf in memory and outputting it to the client.

ajuly

Originally posted by Roger Ramjet
Yes it is. Have a look at the PDF functions , there is an example on the main page for creating a pdf in memory and outputting it to the client.

Thanks, I was afraid someone would use a similar example. 🙂
My fault, sould have been more specific.

Forget about PDF and third party libraries (can't use them: I do not have access to the server configs or php.ini). The only thing I can do is to make a directory writable. 🙁

How about CSV?
I am trying to figure out how to generate a file on the fly without having to delete it afterwards from the server. Also the file needs to have a csv extension so it's not like ("Please save this file with a .csv extension").

Any ideas?

leatherback

This is part of a script i use for pushing files:


//Set correct headertype

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

//Create a filename

$filename = "Registratie_GBM2005_".date("F_j_Y").".txt";
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$filename");


// connect to database

 include("../includes/settings.php");
mysql_connect($db_host, $db_user, $db_password)
      or die ("<b>Er was een probleem met het verbinden met de database.</b> 
                Neem contact op met Jelle Ferwerda voor hulp bij het verhelpen van dit probleem");
mysql_select_db($db_name);

// do whatever to get your data

$data = $filedata."\r\n\r\n".$header."\r\n".$data;

// give the data to the user

echo $data;

ajuly

Thanks very much!!!

It worked like a charm. I just put die(); at the end of the scrpt to stop outputting the rest of the file and it gives me nice and clean csv in all browsers I tested.

You save my life!