Question

I want to force the browser to download all files linked inside a RSS-Feed, that is created by a php-script.

Therefore I need to change the HTTP-headers of these files and set

header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$file");

(and maybe also some other changes).

At the moment I try to do this using a download script, that sets these parameters.

However, the disadvantage of this method is, that I have to link to “download.php” instead of “target.file”, which is somehow misleading for the user. Besides, I have to reveal the internal file path to the user or use quite a lot of GET-variables instead.

It would be much better if it was possible to change the HTTP-headers inside the script that generates the RSS-Feed. Is there a way to achieve this?

Answer 1

You can’t change the headers from inside the RSS feed. You could, however, hide the download.php part with some rewrite magic:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^download/.*$ /download.php?file=$1 [L]

This would cause any URL starting with /download/ to be run through your download script:

• /img/foo.jpg – normal file
• /download/img/foo.jpg – force a download

You could do a similar thing without the PHP too:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^download/.*$ /$1 [L]

<Location /download>
    Header add Content-Disposition "attachment"
</Location>