Question

which is the best way to download from php large files without consuming all server’s memory?

I could do this (bad code):

$url='http://server/bigfile';
$cont = file_get_contents($url);
file_put_contents('./localfile',$cont);

This example loads entry remote file in $cont and this could exceed memory limit.

Is there a safe function (maybe built-in) to do this (maybe stream_*)?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can use curl and the option CURLOPT_FILE to save the downloaded content directly to a file.

set_time_limit(0);
$fp = fopen ('file', 'w+b');
$ch = curl_init('http://remote_url/file');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 75);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);