PHP Heaers / Force download

[_tina_]

Hi,

 

I have a page, you click on a link and are brought to a new page which forces a PDF download.

The problem is that the file starts to download and the page doesn't even load an stays on the current page.

So I click the link, the file starts but I stay on the current page.  Is there a way around this?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

This is the page that forces the download which never loads.

 

header("Content-type: application/pdf");
header("'Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"email.pdf\"");
readfile($file);

include("header.php");
//sleep(5);
?>
<br>
<p>
Page content..
</p>

[ram4nd]

$file is not declared

read

http://php.net/manual/en/function.header.php

[_tina_]

$file is declared, I just didn't copy that part of my code.

 

I have read the header function page, not really sure whats going on here.

 

Anybody have any ideas?

 

$file is not declared

read

http://php.net/manual/en/function.header.php

[alex3]

The problem is you're trying to serve two different types of content on one page. The headers you're sending to the web browser basically say "I'm sending you a PDF file, and I'm going to start outputting it now".

 

After this declaration, you've got HTML, which isn't what the browser is expecting (and rightly so, because you've told it otherwise). So the browser downloads the file, and behaves like it would if you were linking directly to a zip file or something. Try it, create a little HTML page with an anchor link to something that the browser can't display natively (so no images, audio/movie files etc.) and you'll see exactly the same behaviour: the browser starts the download, but stays on the page with the link.

[_tina_]

Thanks for that Alex, that makes a lot of sense.  I guess I'll have to find an alternate way to achieve this.  Thanks again.

 

The problem is you're trying to serve two different types of content on one page. The headers you're sending to the web browser basically say "I'm sending you a PDF file, and I'm going to start outputting it now".

 

After this declaration, you've got HTML, which isn't what the browser is expecting (and rightly so, because you've told it otherwise). So the browser downloads the file, and behaves like it would if you were linking directly to a zip file or something. Try it, create a little HTML page with an anchor link to something that the browser can't display natively (so no images, audio/movie files etc.) and you'll see exactly the same behaviour: the browser starts the download, but stays on the page with the link.