Download a file to server from url , which is generated dynamically - php

Question

I need to Download a zip file to my server from url , which is generated dynamically which means there will be no extension in url. zip file will be generated by the url. We need to save that zip file in the server.
I tried this.
function DownloadFile($reportDownloadUrl, $downloadPath) {
$reader = fopen(urldecode($reportDownloadUrl), 'rb') or die("url cannot open");
if (!file_exists($downloadPath)) {
die('File does not exist');
}
$writer = fopen($downloadPath, 'wb') or die("cannot open file");
if (!$reader) {
throw new Exception("Failed to open URL " . $reportDownloadUrl . ".");
}
if (!$writer) {
fclose($reader);
throw new Exception("Failed to create ZIP file " . $downloadPath . ".");
}
$bufferSize = 10 * 1024;
while (!feof($reader)) {
if (false === ($buffer = fread($reader, $bufferSize))) {
fclose($reader);
fclose($writer);
throw new Exception("Read operation from URL failed.");
}
if (fwrite($writer, $buffer) === false) {
fclose($reader);
fclose($writer);
$exception = new Exception("Write operation to ZIP file failed.");
}
}
fclose($reader);
fflush($writer);
fclose($writer);
}
By using this i can download the file which has extension .zip file, but i cannot download file which doesn't have extensions. I've been trying for ages to figure this out, there must be a way, any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

There might be a couple reasons why you can't download a URL with no extension with your code. Your code is designed to read from a direct link, but sometimes there might be a redirect prior to that, or the file might not be accessible directly unless you send certain cookies, a user agent, a referrer, etc.
For that reason I recommend that you look into the cURL library. It provides a set of functions that allow you to easily perform all the aforementioned tasks. Here's a snippet that mimics your DownloadFile function, with the exception that it follows redirects :
function DownloadFile($reportDownloadUrl, $downloadPath) {
{
$ch = curl_init($reportDownloadUrl);
$fh = fopen($downloadPath, 'ab');
if($fh === false)
throw new Exception('Failed to open ' . $downloadPath);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fh); // file handle to write to
$result = curl_exec($ch);
if($result === false) // it's important to check the contents of curl_error if the request fails
throw new Exception('Unable to perform the request : ' . curl_error($ch));
}
cURL contains a lot of cool options like resuming a file download, uploading data, using proxies, etc. You can read all about it in the manual : http://php.net/curl-setopt
A few more things about your code :
The if(!$reader) and if(!$writer) checks are redundant because the script will die if the fopen() calls fail
You didn't throw $exception