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Asked: 2026-05-14T19:16:15+00:00

I have a script that allows users to ‘save as’ a pdf, this is

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I have a script that allows users to ‘save as’ a pdf, this is the script –

<?php
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");

$file = $_GET["file"] .".pdf";
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=" . urlencode($file));   
header("Content-Type: application/force-download");
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Type: application/download");
header("Content-Description: File Transfer");            
header("Content-Length: " . filesize($file));
flush(); // this doesn't really matter.
$fp = fopen($file, "r");
while (!feof($fp))
{
    echo fread($fp, 65536);
    flush(); // this is essential for large downloads
} 
fclose($fp);
?>

An error log is being created and gets to be more than a gig in a few days the errors I receive are-

[10-May-2010 12:38:50] PHP Warning:  filesize() [<a href='function.filesize'>function.filesize</a>]: stat failed for BYJ-Timetable.pdf in /home/byj/public_html/pdf_server.php on line 10
[10-May-2010 12:38:50] PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/byj/public_html/pdf_server.php:10) in /home/byj/public_html/pdf_server.php on line 10
[10-May-2010 12:38:50] PHP Warning:  fopen(BYJ-Timetable.pdf) [<a href='function.fopen'>function.fopen</a>]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/byj/public_html/pdf_server.php on line 12
[10-May-2010 12:38:50] PHP Warning:  feof(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/byj/public_html/pdf_server.php on line 13
[10-May-2010 12:38:50] PHP Warning:  fread(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/byj/public_html/pdf_server.php on line 15
[10-May-2010 12:38:50] PHP Warning:  feof(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/byj/public_html/pdf_server.php on line 13
[10-May-2010 12:38:50] PHP Warning:  fread(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/byj/public_html/pdf_server.php on line 15

The line 13 and 15 just continue on and on… I’m a bit of a newbie with php so any help is great.
Thanks guys
Nik

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    What’s happening is:

    • Your file could not be found, so the filesize function errorred out
    • Because it errored out, it produced output.
    • Once you have output, you CANNOT send anymore headers
    • Because you are sending more headers, you are getting more errors

    Because your file was not found, your while loop will error out forever, because you are trying to read from a file that does not exist.

    ALSO: A file has ONE content-type, not 4. You need to pick one of the content-types and use that one, you can’t pass them all.

    And finally: Your script is horribly insecure. If someone passed ?file=/home/apache/secret_db_passwords.txt then they would immediately have access to your stuff.

    Edit: PHP has a function called readfile that is designed to handle exactly what you are trying to do. You do not need to have a while loop run thru the file sending bit by bit. Just do readfile($file); and the web server will handle all that crap for you

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