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Simple Function To Force Download Of A File

July 21st, 2007 Chris Leave a comment Go to comments

The following function will allow you to run a file download through PHP, you could use this to help with tracking of downloads on a site for example. Or to force a Powerpoint file to download rather than open in the browser, no matter what the users browser settings.

Note however that if you are doing file integrity checksums (md5, sha1, etc.) against the file the file passed through in this way will not have the same checksum as the file when saved on the client machine or the file stored on the server.

  1.  
  2. //-----------------------------------------------
  3. // Function to force download of a file
  4. //-----------------------------------------------
  5. public function download($file_name, $file_path, $mime_type)
  6. {
  7.         header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
  8.         header('Content-Type: '.$mime_type);
  9.         header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$file_name.'";');
  10.         header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
  11.         header('Content-Length: ' .    filesize($file_path));
  12.         @readfile($file_path);
  13.         die();
  14. }

 

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