how can I download a file with Zend_Http_Client or other library

Question

I am trying to find a solution to get directly the file like wget does instead of reading from the stream and writing to another file, but I am not sure if this is possible.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

With CURLOPT_FILE you can write some filestream direct into an open filehandle (see curl_setopt).

/**
 * @param string $url
 * @param string $destinationFilePath
 * @throws Exception
 * @return string
 */
protected function _downloadFile($url, $destinationFilePath)
{
    $fileHandle = fopen($destinationFilePath, 'w');

    if (false === $fileHandle) {
        throw new Exception('Could not open filehandle');
    }

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fileHandle);

    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    fclose($fileHandle);

    if (false === $result) {
        throw new Exception('Could not download file');
    }

    return $destinationFilePath;
}

Edit based on your comments:
If you want a oneliner or want to use wget call it through exec() or system() like so:

exec('wget http://google.de/ -O google.html -q') 

Edit for later reference:

<?php
function downloadCurl($url, $destinationFilePath)
{
    $fileHandle = fopen($destinationFilePath, 'w');

    if (false === $fileHandle) {
        throw new Exception('Could not open filehandle');
    }

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fileHandle);

    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    fclose($fileHandle);

    if (false === $result) {
        throw new Exception('Could not download file');
    }
}


function downloadCopy($url, $destinationFilePath)
{
    if (false === copy($url, $destinationFilePath)) {
        throw new Exception('Could not download file');
    }
}

function downloadExecWget($url, $destinationFilePath)
{
    $output = array();
    $return = null;
    exec(sprintf('wget %s -O %s -q', escapeshellarg($url), escapeshellarg($destinationFilePath)), $output, $return);

    if (1 === $return) {
        throw new Exception('Could not download file');
    }
}

All three methods have nearly equal runtime and memory usage.
Use whatever fits best to your environment.

Answer 2

$c = file_get_contents('http://www.example.com/my_file.tar.gz');

And now write $c to local file ...

Answer 3

I also found copy which allows to copy a file from an url directly to your disk and is a oneliner without the complexity of curl or the need to create an empty file where to transfer the content of file_get_contents.

copy($file_url, $localpath);

Answer 4

file_put_contents($local_path, file_get_contents($file_url));

is a one liner too ;-)

The only issue with above code could be with very large files: copy could be better in that case, but see also http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.copy.php#88520

Some testing needed...