Question

If I goto http://site.com/uploads/file.pdf I can retrieve a file.

However, if I have a script such as:

<?php 

ini_set('display_errors',1);
error_reporting(E_ALL|E_STRICT);

//require global definitions 
require_once("includes/globals.php"); 
//validate the user before continuing 
isValidUser(); 
$subTitle = "Attachment";   
$attachmentPath = "/var/www/html/DEVELOPMENT/serviceNow/selfService/uploads/";
if(isset($_GET['id']) and !empty($_GET['id'])){
    //first lookup attachment meta information 
    $a = new Attachment(); 
    $attachment = $a->get($_GET['id']); 
    //filename will be original file name with user name.n prepended 
    $fileName = $attachmentPath.$_SESSION['nameN'].'-'.$attachment->file_name; 
    //instantiate new attachmentDownload and query for attachment chunks 
    $a = new AttachmentDownload(); 
    $chunks= $a->getRecords(array('sys_attachment'=>$_GET['id'], '__order_by'=>'position')); 


    $fh = fopen($fileName.'.gz','w');                                                      
    // read and base64 encode file contents 
    foreach($chunks as $chunk){
            fwrite($fh, base64_decode($chunk->data));   
    }
    fclose($fh);

    //open up filename for writing 
    $fh = fopen($fileName,'w');     
    //open up filename.gz for extraction                                
    $zd = gzopen($fileName.'.gz', "r");
    //iterate over file and write contents 
    while (!feof($zd)) {
            fwrite($fh, gzread($zd, 60*57));    
    }
    fclose($fh); 
    gzclose($zd);
    unlink($fileName.'.gz'); 
    $info = pathinfo($fileName); 

    header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
    header('Content-Type: '.Mimetypes::get($info['extension']));
    header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=' . basename($fileName));
    header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
    header('Expires: 0');
    header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
    header('Pragma: public');
    header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($fileName));
    ob_clean();
    flush();
    readfile($fileName);
    exit();
}else{
    header("location: ".$links['status']."?".urlencode("item=incident&action=view&status=-1&place=".$links['home']));   
}


?>

This results in sending me the file, but when I open it I receive an error saying:

"File type plain text document (text/plain) is not supported"

Answer 1

First off, I’d start by checking the HTTP headers. You can do this in Firefox easily using the “Live HTTP headers” extension; not sure about equivalents in other browsers offhand. This will let you verify if the header is actually getting set to “application/pdf” and whether your other headers are getting set as well.

If none of the headers are getting set, you might be inadvertently sending output before the calls to header(). Is there any whitespace before the <?php tag?