Download as a text file

[ungovernable]

Hi,

I have a variable called $text that contains a big text.

is there an easy way, while clicking on a link, my users would be able to download an auto-generated .TXT file containing $text ?

thanks a lot

[ShawnK]

yes, you can use the fopen() and fwrite() functions I will post an example in a few...

[ShawnK]

$big_text="This is my content";
$dl_file="bigtext.txt";               

$fhandle = fopen ($dl_file, "w");  

fwrite ($fhandle,$big_text); 
fclose ($fhandle);                             

[rulian]

if your just trying to convert a string variable to a file, you must do it through headers or write the string to a file and link the file,
the easiest is :

$Filename="blah.txt";
$Content="hello there"; 
header("Content-Type: application/x-unknown\n");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$Filename ");
echo $Content
exit();

[ungovernable]

ok but just wondering, when i will click the link will it start download or open the .TXT in browser?

do i have to put it in a ZIP to force download?

[rulian]

what I gave you is an example, if it's a txt file your trying to download it shoud just pop up the "file download" dialog box.

Fiel headers are handled differely by different browsers. Go to PHP.net and look up header in the online documentation. They will (rather should) have better explanations.

[rulian]

so you wont need to zip them

[bradgrafelman]

Note that this won't work for IE - it will still display the text. This, however, does seem to work for IE:

$Filename="blah.txt"; 
$Content="hello there"; 
header("Content-Type: text/plain");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$Filename"); 
echo $Content;
exit();

EDIT: Alternatively, I also found a server-side workaround posted in a blog.