session_start() with pdf blobs

nonose

Scenario: I have pdf's stored in mySQL database. When I open them I want to authenticate user b4 opening but when I use session_start() it does not show pdf on Internet Explorer. It still works OK on mozilla browsers. Something to do with the headers.
Does anybody know a work around or how I can use session based authentication to validate b4 downloading pdf data from blob field?

TruckStuff

It probably has more to do with IE than session_start(). I create/serve PDFs on the fly every day after authenticating the user.

IE has a couple of bugs when serving PDFs (or any file for d/l). First, it won't refresh the mime-type of a page even after the page is refreshed, so when you serve the PDF, if there is an error thrown, it reads the mime-type as text/html. If you fix the error, then simply hit refresh on that window, IE won't chnage the mime-type, so it spits out the PDF as text/gibberish to the browser. You have to navigate to a different page, than come back to that page to get it working in IE.

The other bug only applies if you are serving files from an SSL server. IE requires some weird headers (specifically, Pragma, I think). Google should help you find the specific headers.

nonose

Thanks though it works perfectly on IE unless I use session_start() before delivering pdf

TruckStuff

nonose wrote:
Thanks though it works perfectly on IE unless I use session_start() before delivering pdf

That doesn't mean that there aren't errors on the page.

Are you spitting out any blank lines before the output? Posting the code would probably be helpful.

nonose

Code is below
If I uncomment the first block (I have taken out authchecking code as this doesn't send any headers), IE downloads the pdf but displays just a blank screen.

//<?php session_start();
//session autentication code here
// ?>
<?php
$ids = $_POST['id'];
if(!is_numeric($ids))
die("Invalid document identification specified");
// Database connection variables
$dbServer = "localhost";
$dbDatabase = "####";
$dbUser = "####";
$dbPass = "####";
$sConn = mysql_connect($dbServer, $dbUser, $dbPass)
or die("Couldn't connect to database server");
$dConn = mysql_select_db($dbDatabase, $sConn)
or die("Couldn't connect to database $dbDatabase");
$dbQuery = "SELECT fileType, documentName ";
$dbQuery .= "FROM news ";
$dbQuery .= "WHERE id = $ids";
$result = mysql_query($dbQuery) or die("Couldn't get file list");
if(mysql_num_rows($result) == 1)
{
$fileType = @mysql_result($result, 0, "fileType");
$fileContent = @mysql_result($result, 0, "documentName");
header("Content-type: $fileType ");
echo $fileContent;
}
else
{
echo "Record doesn't exist.";
}
?>