Question

My script is the following:

<?php
header("Content-type:application/pdf");

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

// The PDF source is in original.pdf
readfile("www.example.com/test.pdf");
?>

Now if I change readfile to say:

// The PDF source is in original.pdf
readfile("test.pdf");

It works fine, if however I specify and absolute URL, readfile("www.example.com/test.pdf");

the PDF does not open up. The above only seems to work locally.

Does anybody know why absolute url’s are not working? Cheers

Solution:

// The PDF source is in original.pdf 

readfile($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/test.pdf"); 

This function only works with absolute paths, not urls.

Answer 1

• You are missing the protocol: http://
• And check your allow_url_fopen settings!
• Turn on error reporting

.

ini_set('display_errors', true);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

A smarter approach would be to store/cache the remote file localy, so you don’t have to download it every time. And it would take the load off the target site.