Download RAR file from a link (server) - php

Question

I'm trying to download a .rar file from a cloud (for sake of simplicity I'm using my google drive storage), the file is downloading perfectly, but once i want to open the .rar file , it says that "the archive is either unknown format or damaged" , tried all methods even cURL ,but it didnt want to work,
Im just wondering what I'm missing in my code, thank you
<?php
$filename = 'stu.rar';
if ( file_put_contents( $filename,file_get_contents("mygoogleDriveLink/search?q=stu.rar"))) {
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$filename.'"');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
header('Pragma: public');
//header('Content-Length: '.filesize($filename));
readfile($filename);
//print_r("this is ".$id);
exit();
}
else{
echo "err";
}

Answer 1

You may use file_put_contents to save the file to the server first, before you stream it to your browser.
if you do not need to stream to user's web browser, then you may remove the codes from start streaming to end streaming.
Please try the following:
<?php
// Initialize a file URL to the variable
$url = 'http://www.xxxxxxxxxxx.com/xxxxx.rar';
// Use basename() function to return the base name of file
$file_name = basename($url);
// Use file_get_contents() function to get the file
// from url and use file_put_contents() function to
// save the file by using base name
if(file_put_contents( $file_name,file_get_contents($url))) {
// File successfully saved in the server
// start streaming . The following is to stream and save to browser
$file_name = $file_name;
$file_url = $file_name;
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: Binary");
header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$file_name."\"");
readfile($file_url);
exit;
/// end streaming
}
else {
echo "File downloading failed.";
}
?>