Question

I’m looking to add a ‘Download this File’ function below every video on one of my sites. I need to force the user to download the file, instead of just linking to it, since that begins playing a file in the browser sometimes. The problem is, the video files are stored on a separate server.

Any way I can force the download in PHP?

Answer 1

You could try something like this:

<?php  // Locate. $file_name = 'file.avi'; $file_url = 'http://www.myremoteserver.com/' . $file_name;  // Configure. header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream'); header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: Binary");  header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$file_name."\"");  // Actual download. readfile($file_url);  // Finally, just to be sure that remaining script does not output anything. exit; 

I just tested it and it works for me.

Please note that for readfile to be able to read a remote url, you need to have your fopen_wrappers enabled.