View file stored in database using php on browser - php

Question

I'm trying to view files (i.e: excel sheets/pdf/images) on browser that are stored in database.
I already wrote a code for downloading the files from the database and it is working but I want to display it in the browser.
Here is the code:
<?php require_once('Connections/databasestudents.php'); ?>
<?php
$id = $_GET['id']; // ID of entry you wish to view. To use this enter "view.php?id=x" where x is the entry you wish to view.
$query = "SELECT fileContent, filetype FROM file where id = $id"; //Find the file, pull the filecontents and the filetype
$result = MYSQL_QUERY($query); // run the query
if($row=mysql_fetch_row($result)) // pull the first row of the result into an array(there will only be one)
{
$data = $row[0]; // First bit is the data
$type = $row[1]; // second is the filename
Header( "Content-type: $type"); // Send the header of the approptiate file type, if it's' a image you want it to show as one :)
print $data; // Send the data.
}
else // the id was invalid
{
echo "invalid id";
}
?>
What happens is that view.php is downloaded and nothing is viewed.
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

According to your code, $row[1] is "the filename". The Content type header should contain the content type instead, i.e. the file mime type, for example:
header('Content-type: application/pdf');
If you want to add a filename:
header('Content-type: application/pdf');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.$row[1]);
print $data;
Be sure $data is the content of the file, something you can take from readfile() for example.
Read more on the manual: http://php.net/manual/en/function.readfile.php
Keep in mind that while PDF and images are easily viewable by a browser, I think Excel needs some ad hoc plugin for that.
A more complete example right out of the manual, to get you a more thorough idea (not all those headers are necessary, and you should change others accordingly to your code):
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.basename($file));
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
header('Pragma: public');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
ob_clean();
flush();
readfile($file);
exit;