retrieving files from database by their path - php

Question

I have a simple html form, that saves the email message and multiple attachments path. I am saving the files on the server and their path to the database filed.
Now how can i retrive the files from its path, and then show them to user, when click on Download, I am using the following code for getting the file, but this is not working
$query = "
SELECT `type`, `name`, `size`, `file1`,`file2`,`file3`,`file4`,`file5`
FROM `upload` WHERE `id` = {$id}";
$result = $dbLink->query($query);
if($result) {
if($result->num_rows == 1) {
$row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result);
header("Content-Type: ". $row['type']);
header("Content-Length: ". $row['size']);
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=". $row['name']);
$path = $row['file1'];
$dir = opendir($path);
echo $dir;
while ($dir && ($file = readdir($dir)) !== false) {
echo $file;
}
The echoed file doesnot contain any data.
This i am doing now for only one file, whose path is at "file1". Similarly i have 5 attachments path, and i have to retrive them all in this code.
Please how can i do it.

Answer 1

First: You can't have more than one download like this. You can only send that header once and that's it.
Is $path the full path to the file? You could try is_readable($file) to check first in a test. Once you have the full path though, it's simple.
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Length: ". $row['size']);
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=". $row['name']);
readfile($row['file1']);
exit();
Readfile outputs directly and streams it, so you don't have to read the content in and then output it. Add the exit to make sure no other output get's added after it, or you could corrupt the file.
This works, assuming $row['file1'] has a correct path!
For multiple files, you have to make multiple calls. Like give the user mutliple links they can click on for downloads.
The only alternative is that you pack it together using zip for example, and send it as one large zipfile.