Download File to server from URL

Question

Well, this one seems quite simple, and it is. All you have to do to download a file to your server is:

file_put_contents("Tmpfile.zip", file_get_contents("http://someurl/file.zip"));

Only there is one problem. What if you have a large file, like 100mb. Then, you will run out of memory, and not be able to download the file.

What I want is a way to write the file to the disk as I am downloading it. That way, I can download bigger files, without running into memory problems.

Answer 1

Look at fopen().

Unfortunately, for writing piece by piece, you can't use the more abstract file_put_contents().

Answer 2

Try using cURL

set_time_limit(0); // unlimited max execution time
$options = array(
  CURLOPT_FILE => '/path/to/download/the/file/to.zip',
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 28800, // set this to 8 hours so we dont timeout on big files
  CURLOPT_URL => 'http://remoteserver.com/path/to/big/file.zip',
);

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, $options);
curl_exec($ch);

Im not sure but i beleive witht he file option it writes as it pulls the data... ie. not buffered.

Answer 3

private function downloadFile ($url, $path) {

  $newfname = $path;
  $file = fopen ($url, "rb");
  if ($file) {
    $newf = fopen ($newfname, "wb");

    if ($newf)
    while(!feof($file)) {
      fwrite($newf, fread($file, 1024 * 8 ), 1024 * 8 );
    }
  }

  if ($file) {
    fclose($file);
  }

  if ($newf) {
    fclose($newf);
  }
 }