Question

I have a file, index2.php that has been written to by a form.

The whole content of this file, I have stored within a variable $final_code using an output buffer.

I now wish to add a “Download” button to the end of the page, that brings up a Save As dialog, allowing the user to save this file’s source code (i.e. the variable) as a .txt – But I’m stumped.

index2.php:

<?php

// Start buffering the output
ob_start();

?>

<!-- INDEX2.PHP HTML ELEMENTS HERE -->

<?php
// Store the contents of the buffer
$final_code = ob_get_contents();

// Print the contents of the buffer
ob_end_flush();
?>

<form action="savefile.php" method="post">

Happy? Save this to file: <input type="submit" name="savefile" value="Save" />

</form>

I’m not sure if this needs to be worked in to this file or savefile.php, so the latter is currently blank.

Answer 1

i think you cannot force a save as file dialog in browser.

for forceing the download of a txt file i do the following:

header('Pragma: anytextexeptno-cache', true);
header("Pragma: public");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Cache-Control: private", false);
header("Content-Type: text/plain");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"example.txt\"");
echo $output;

hope that helps.