file downloader .. only on href?

severndigital

Ok so i have a function that writes the file i want. It works fine.

My question is .. how do i get that function to run ONLY when someone clicks on the link??

In other words, I don't want to write the file unless the person clicks on the link. Once they click on the link they will be prompted as normal to download the file.

Any ideas??

Thanks,
-C

Ashley_Sheridan

Hi, if I understand you right, then you can use a separate PHP file entirely to call your function. Then your link just points to this PHP page.

If the function has to exist inside the current page, then use GET variables in your link. So, for example, the HREF of the link tag could be something like this: somepage.php?writefile=yes

Now in your PHP code, do a check for this variable:

if(isset($_GET['writefile']) && $_GET['writefile'] == 'yes')
{
    // call your function here
}

severndigital

ok. I did that. and i understand your explanation.

But how do i tell the browser that it should download the file??

here is my code that created the file on the server.

function exportToFile($headers,$rows,$name){

$post = date("YmdHis");	
	$filename = '../report_Files/' . $name . '-' . $post . '.csv';

	$fp = fopen($filename, 'w');
			fputcsv($fp, $headers);

		foreach($rows as $lines) {
			fputcsv($fp, $lines);

		}
	fclose($fp);

return $filename;		

}

Then i implemented what you told me. I am using this as the href

filedownloader.php?writefile=yes&type=obu

include_once '../../lib/database.php';
include_once 'report-querys.php';
if(isset($_GET['writefile']) && $_GET['writefile'] == 'yes')
{

if($_GET['type'] == 'obu'){
        orderByuser('file'); //the above file function is used within this function when the call for 'file' is requested.
}
}

All i get is a blank page. However, the file has been generated on the server. How do i download it??

Thanks

Ashley_Sheridan

You can stream the file down to the user with this code:

header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$filename");
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Length: " . filesize("$path"));
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");

$fp = fopen($path, "rb");
while(!feof($fp))
{
    print(fread($fp, 1024));
    flush($fp);
}
fclose($fp);
exit();

Basically, you only need to worry about the $path and $filename variables. $filename stores the name of the file that is shown to the user downloading (i.e. video.mpg) and $path stores the whole path to the file (i.e. /srv/www/htdocs/yoursite/clips/video.mpg)

severndigital

thanks .. it's working perfectly now.