How to download client-site a video with cURL / PHP? - php

Question

If the following PHP is runnig, I would like to download the file with `cURL on the client-site. It means, if one of my website visitor run's an action, which starts this PHP file, it should download the file on this PC.
I tried with different locations, but without any success. If I run my code, it does always download it on my WebSever, which is not this, what I want.
<?php
//The resource that we want to download.
$fileUrl = 'https://www.example.com/this-is-a-example-video';
//The path & filename to save to.
$saveTo = 'test.mp4';
//Open file handler.
$fp = fopen($saveTo, 'w+');
//If $fp is FALSE, something went wrong.
if($fp === false){
throw new Exception('Could not open: ' . $saveTo);
}
//Create a cURL handle.
$ch = curl_init($fileUrl);
//Pass our file handle to cURL.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
//Timeout if the file doesn't download after 20 seconds.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 20);
//Execute the request.
curl_exec($ch);
//If there was an error, throw an Exception
if(curl_errno($ch)){
throw new Exception(curl_error($ch));
}
//Get the HTTP status code.
$statusCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
//Close the cURL handler.
curl_close($ch);
if($statusCode == 200){
echo 'Downloaded!';
} else{
echo "Status Code: " . $statusCode;
}
?>
How can I change the cURL downloading process to the client-site?

Answer 1

PHP cannot run client-side.
You could use cURL to download data to the server (without saving it to a file) and then output that data to the client.
Don't do this:
//Open file handler.
$fp = fopen($saveTo, 'w+');
or this:
//Pass our file handle to cURL.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
Then capture the output:
//Execute the request.
curl_exec($ch);
Should be:
//Execute the request.
$output = curl_exec($ch);
Then you can:
echo $output;
… but make sure you set the Content-Type and consider setting the Content-Length response headers. You might also want Content-Disposition.
Under most circumstances, it would probably be better to simply send the browser to fetch the file directly instead of proxying it through the server.
$fileUrl = 'https://www.example.com/this-is-a-example-video';
header("Location: $fileUrl");