How do you initiate/force a download for files that reside externally in PHP or other language?

Question

If you have images or other files that reside externally, how do force the browser to download the link when a user click on it?

The use of \"Content-disposition: attac

Answer 1

You can use the download attribute. Just add download = 'filename.extension' to the download link:

 <a link='mysite.com/sfsf.extension' download='filenameuwant.extension'></a>

Answer 2

I use a combination of the aforementioned "Content-Disposition" header, as well as forcing the type:

header("Content-type: attachment/octet-stream");
header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename="'.$filename.'"');

Answer 3

I use a method similar to this for downloading mp4 files, could work for text files:

$file=fopen('http://example.com/example.txt','r');
header("Content-Type:text/plain");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="example.txt");
fpassthru($file);

Answer 4

You will have to load the resource on the server first. You might want to do some caching also:

<?php
  header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=myfile.jpg");
  echo file_get_contents("http://host.tld/path/to/myfile.jpg");
?>

Answer 5

I don't think it is possible to force a file download if you are not controlling the HTTP headers. Content-disposition: attachment is the only way I know of to accomplish this.

Though this is probably not going to work, my only guess would be trying to combine Content-disposition with a Location header:

Content-disposition: attachment; filename=myfile.jpg
Location: http://www.somesite.com/myfile.jpg

(it's a long shot, probably invalid and/or just bad practice)

Answer 6

This is not possible. You cannot dictate a client how to handle a different resource than the currently requested one.

You could only use a proxy to fetch the external external file and pass it to the client.