Question

I have to provide a download from a remote url where I dont know the file size.

The problems I had so far

• I dont know the file size

• Large file about 100 mb

• When I provide download for user with CURL/readfile/… then PHP wait as long the ful file and then shows Download Window.

How can I provide a part, stream, chunky downloader?

I want to do something like on phpmyadmin – if you download a sql export – then it streams also.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Streaming is normally done using a small buffer. Lets say you had allow_url_fopen set to true:

$file = fopen('http://example.com/large-file.bin', 'rb');
while (($content = fread($file, 2048)) !== false) { // Read in 2048-byte chunks
    echo $content; // or output it somehow else.
    flush(); // force output so far
}
fclose($file);