Question

What code do you need to add in PHP to automatically have the browser download a file to the local machine when a link is visited?

I am specifically thinking of functionality similar to that of download sites that prompt the user to save a file to disk once you click on the name of the software?

Answer 1

Send the following headers before outputting the file:

header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\'' . basename($File) . '\''); header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream'); header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($File)); header('Connection: close'); 

@grom: Interesting about the ‘application/octet-stream’ MIME type. I wasn’t aware of that, have always just used ‘application/force-download’ 🙂