Question

I have a website that lists attachments. Clicking on these attachments result in one of two types of behaviours –

1. The attachment opens in the same window.
2. The attachment presents the user with a dialog to open or save the document.

Number 1 appears to only be happening with PDF’s, but is there a way that I can make all attachments present the Save/Open/Cancel popup to users?

Answer 1

For the PDF only ..

// The user will receive a PDF to download
header('Content-type: application/pdf');

// File will be called downloaded.pdf
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="downloaded.pdf"');

// The actual PDF file on the server is source.pdf
readfile('source.pdf');

…

for all other file type perhaps you could use .. echo mime_content_type('Yourfile.ext') o

header('Content-type: '.mime_content_type('Yourfile.ext'));
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$output_filename.'"');
readfile($source_filename);

Beware that I haven’t tested it…

The Content-type header specifies what type of file is to be downloaded, specified by a mime type.
The Content-Disposition header specifies a new filename for the file which is to be downloaded.
The readfile line is not a header being sent, but a PHP call that gets all the data from a file and outputs it. The argument you pass to the readfile function is the location of the actual pdf file to be downloaded.

UPDATE

mime_content_type() function is deprecated. you’ll ned to replace with this …

$finfo = new finfo;

$fileinfo = $finfo->file($file, FILEINFO_MIME);