save the file in users desktop

Question

I have a file where i m able to generate the pdf, but i want the path to be users desktop which would save it automatically.

$pdf->Output("sample.pdf");

What should be path.

Answer 1

No matter what you have server side you won't be able to automatically save a file on a user's system via their browser with no interaction from them as that would be a massive security hole. The user will always have to confirm the save of a file.

For similar reasons you won't be able to query the directory structure of a User's system via the browser, and even if you could I don't think you can give a browser a suggested directory in which to save something.

Answer 2

You can't do that with PHP. PHP runs on your server, not on your user's desktop. You probably want to store the file somewhere on the server, and then show the user a link to download the generated file.

Unless of course, you're talking about running PHP locally on your user's computer (i.e. apache or some other webserver is installed on your user's computer, in which case please clarify your question.

Answer 3

Assuming your php script is running as a client-side app through the Command Line Interface or PHP-GTK, you should first check if the system it runs on actually is a Win32 type machine.

Next you'd need to use the Windows Only Extensions to invoke the native Win32 API Function call returning a well-known location such as user's desktop folder, that is SHGetFolderPath() with a CSIDL_DESKTOP as a second parameter.

If however your script runs on a server, there's no way to put the file on user's desktop directly without her actually being instructed to do so.

Answer 4

You should output the PDF to the browser and provide the appropriate headers to have the file be recognised as PDF (or merely as downloadable to force a download). Also make sure not to output anything other than the PDF as that might corrupt the file.

EDIT: Note that if you use a webbrowser it is, for security reasons, not possible to FORCE an automatic download. You can only prompt a download, not activate it.

If you're talking about a PHP script (e.g. on a Linux workstation), you probably want to do something completely different. If the PDF library doesn't let you specify a path, do the same you would do in a web browser sans the headers and use an output buffer to catch the output and write it to a file -- if you run the script directly, it'll have the necessary privileges to write to your home directory.