Best way to download binary file

[mtorbin]

Hey all,

 

I am in the process of building a loop where each iteration will download (via http) a binary file (image or flv) from a source.  I could use wget but isn't there something built into php to handle this kind of thing?

 

Thanks,

 

- MT

[cooldude832]

you can mod headers to push data like a download

[trq]

You can use fopen to read a binary file.

[mtorbin]

Thanks guys.  Tried doing this using curl and I'm getting odd results.  The files are downloading exactly as expected, however, each files returns a "false".  The only thing I can think of is that the curl does not actually return a boolean:

 

    if(exec("curl $remoteVideo -o $localVideo")) {
        writeEchoLog("Successfully downloaded " . $videoFileName . ".flv.");
    }
    else {
        writeEchoLog("There was an error downloading " . $videoFileName . ".flv.");
    }
    
    if(exec("curl $remoteImage -o $localImage")) {
        writeEchoLog("Successfully downloaded " . $imageFileName . ".jpg.");
    }
    else {
        writeEchoLog("There was an error downloading " . $imageFileName . ".jpg.\n");
    }

[trq]

Shell commands return 0 on success, equivelent to php's false.

 

Any reason your not using the curl extension?

[mtorbin]

Any reason your not using the curl extension?

 

I am rather new to php so I only start using something once it's suggested I do so, like now.

 

So what is this extension and how can I use it?

 

- MT

[trq]

So what is this extension and how can I use it?

 

Its all covered in the link I supplied.

[mtorbin]

Thanks!  This seems a lot more cryptic then just a straight shell command.  Maybe I'm missing something, but when I looked through the curl_setopt options, i couldn't find one for setting the location of the local file:

 

$file = "my_file.flv";

$curlInit = curl_init("http://myLocation.com/videos/");
$fileReader = fopen($file, "w");

curl_setopt($curlInit, CURLOPT_FILE, $fileReader);
curl_setopt($curlInit, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);

curl_exec($curlInit);
curl_close($curlInit);
fclose($fileReader);

 

So, the curl session is based upon $curlInit . $file, right?

 

  - MT