Question

I am creating a download script that will allow me to allow users to download files that may be sitting on my server locally or on a remote server. In both cases, I do not want the user to find out the original file location.

In the case of my file being on my server, its easy:

$data = file_get_contents('/local/path');
$name = 'myphoto';
force_download($name, $data); //codeigniter

However, for remote files, if I do this:

$data = file_get_contents('/remote/path');
$name = 'myphoto';
force_download($name, $data);

It will download to my server first, which is going to delay the download for the user.

Is there a way I can stream any file somehow through my server to the user? So it starts downloading straight away? Possible?

Answer 1

Look at fpassthru: it’ll take a bit more than what you have, but it should do what you want.

You’ll want something like this:

    $fp = fopen('/remote/path');

    // you can't use force_download($name, $data): you'll need to set the headers 
appropriately by hand: see the code for the download_helper, but you'll need to set the mime type and content-length if you really care.

    header('Content-Type: "'.$mime.'"');
                        header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="myphoto"');
                        header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
                        header('Expires: 0');
                        header('Pragma: no-cache');
                        header("Content-Length: ".strlen($data));
    fpassthru($fp);