PHP: open a file download dialog [duplicate] - php

Question

This question already has answers here:
Force file download with php using header()
(7 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
I have an MPEG file (.mpg) hosted in Amazon S3, that I want to link to a page I have, so the user will be able to download it from the page.
I have in my page a link:
bla bla"
The link to the file works when I right-click it and choose "Save Target As" , but I would like it to work also when I left click it, and that it will open a file download dialog. right now, a left click will direct to a page that has the video directly played in it (in FireFox) or just won't load (in Internet Explorer).
I am working in PHP, why does this happen?

Answer 1

You probably want to wrap the file within a "download" PHP script that sends the appropriate Content-Disposition header telling the browser to treat it as a download instead of a content item.
For instance:
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=yourfilenamehere.ext>");
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/260519

Answer 2

This will work with UTF-8 filenames (say you have one in a variable called $orfilename):
function detectUserAgent() {
if (!array_key_exists('HTTP_USER_AGENT', $_SERVER))
return "Other";
$uas = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
if (preg_match("#Opera/#", $uas))
return "Opera";
if (preg_match("#Firefox/#", $uas))
return "Firefox";
if (preg_match("#Chrome/#", $uas))
return "Chrome";
if (preg_match("#MSIE ([0-9.]+);#", $uas, $matches)) {
if (((float)$matches[1]) >= 7.0)
return "IE";
}
return "Other";
}
/*
* We have 3 options:
* - For FF and Opera, which support RFC 2231, use that format.
* - For IE and Chrome, use attwithfnrawpctenclong
* (http://greenbytes.de/tech/tc2231/#attwithfnrawpctenclong)
* - For the others, convert to ISO-8859-1, if possible
*/
$formatRFC2231 = 'Content-Disposition: attachment; filename*=UTF-8\'\'%s';
$formatDef = 'Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="%s"';
switch (detectUserAgent()) {
case "Opera":
case "Firefox":
$orfilename = rawurlencode($orfilename);
$format = $formatRFC2231;
break;
case "IE":
case "Chrome":
$orfilename = rawurlencode($orfilename);
$format = $formatDef;
break;
default:
if (function_exists('iconv'))
$orfilename =
#iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT", $orfilename);
$format = $formatDef;
}
header(sprintf($format, $orfilename));

Answer 3

On download page do the following
$filename = $_GET['movie']; //Get the filename
if(is_file($filename)) {
//If you want to read and output the contents do it here
header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename='.$filename);
}
exit();
This will tell the browser to treat this as an attachment, thus forcing a download box.