Force download file with PHP giving empty file

Question

The end goal is for the user to download a .csv file. Right now I'm just testing trying to download a simple text file: test.txt. The only thing in this file is the word "test".

Here is the HTML code for files_to_download.php

Test file: <a href='test.php?file=test.txt'>Test.txt</a>

Code for test.php:

if(!(empty($_GET["file"])))
{
    $file_name = $_GET["file"];
    $path = "path/to/file";
    $fullPath = $path . $file_name;

    if(ini_get('zlib.output_compression'))
      ini_set('zlib.output_compression', 'Off');

    header("Cache-Control: public");
    header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
    header("Content-Disposition: inline; attachment; filename=\"$file_name\"");
    header("Content-Type: text/plain");
    header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
    readfile($fullPath);
}

I've tried variations of the headers above, adding more and removing others. The above seem to be the most common recommended on this site.

I've also tried changing

header("Content-Type: text/plain");

to

header("Content-Type: text/csv");

and get same results: empty .txt or .csv file.

The files are not empty when I open them directly (file browser) from the server. I've checked the permissions of the files and they're both 644, so the entire world can at least read the files. The directory is 777.

Is there a configuration on the Apache server I need to specify that may not be or am I missing something above.

Thanks for looking!

Answer 1

Read the text file, then echo the text out after your header() calls.

Here's how I have my csv download set up:

//downloads an export of the user DB
$csv = User::exportUsers();

header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename=userdb.csv');
header('Content-type: text/csv');

echo $csv;

Where exportUsers() creates the csv data. You can easily just replace $csv with the contents of your text file, then echo it out.

And as far as your text file, you can use file_get_contents() to get the contents of your file into a string. Then echo that string.

Answer 2

Try setting the content length of the file:

header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));

Also, please have this in mind: file inclusion

Answer 3

In most cases the path is wrong