[forbiddenpassionfruit]

Hi there,

Sorry to be such a pain but I am just looking for the way to make files downloadable.

IE: I have a website with information in PDF format that I want people to download and save instead of reading in the browser window.

But clicking on the links does open the PDF inside the browser.

So all I would like is to know how to make the little "save as" box appear so they can save the PDF, instead of it automatically opening.

Thanks very much,

Nikkii The Noob

[Nico]

Does your server support PHP?

[forbiddenpassionfruit]

Hello

Yes it does. Its a Linux server with seemlingly standard stuff installed. I know it has the latest version of PHP4, and MYSQL etc.

Thanks very much for replying.

[Nico]

Give this a try. Save it for example as download.php and link to the files you want to download like this.

download.php?file=yourfile.pdf

PHP Code:

<?php



$filedir = './files/';



$filename = basename($_GET['file']);

$path = $filedir . $filename;



if (!is_file($path) OR connection_status() != 0)

{

    exit();

}



ob_end_clean();



header('Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate');

header('Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0', false);

header('Pragma: no-cache');

header('Expires: '. gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s', mktime(date('H')+2, date('i'), date('s'), date('m'), date('d'), date('Y'))).' GMT');

header('Last-Modified: '. gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s').' GMT');

header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');

header('Content-Length: '. @filesize($path));

header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'. $filename .'"');

header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');



if ($file = @fopen($path, 'rb'))

{

    while (!feof($file) AND connection_status() == 0)

    {

        echo fread($file, 1024 * 8);

    }



    flush();

}



@fclose($file);



?>

[forbiddenpassionfruit]

Hi Nico

Its probably just me, but can I check where the download.php file needs to go, and where download.php?file=yourfile.pdf needs to go in my HTML? Do I need to customise anything in the download.php?

Thanks very much for helping with my basic query!

[Nico]

Save the download.php file in the same directory than your HTML files. And change your links to this

Code:

<a href="download.php?file=yourfile.pdf">Download</a>

Instead of linking directly to the PDF like this

Code:

<a href="yourfile.pdf">Download</a>

If your PDFs are in the same directory than the HTML files, then change the first variable in the php file to this

PHP Code:

$filedir = './'; 

[forbiddenpassionfruit]

Ha! Its so simple now. I need to rest my brain more and stop staying up so late

A million thank yous... I just hope I can help someone out here one day

[Nico]

No problem.

Also, be aware that all files in this directory are now downloadable. The user just has to change the URL. I would suggest creating a folder for your PDFs or other files you want to be downloadable, and change the dir name in the download.php file. If you just have HTML files in the same directory, it shouldn't be much of a risk. But if you have any PHP files which hold passwords or whatever, I'd change it.