How to use PHP to generate downloadable content

Jul 22, 2007 1 min read #php

This post is more than 18 months old. Technology changes quickly, so some of this content may be out of date (but that's not always the case). Please verify any technical or programming information against the current release.

I was looking at some code I had written about 3 years ago - how sad! I was creating a PDF of my resume using PHP to grab my qualifications out of a database. Unfortunately, I never researched into the header php command, so I made my job harder. Instead of writing it with a php file, I made a php file, and renamed it as a .pdf file. I modified my .htaccess file to process that one particular file as a php script. This way, the file executed as php but was mime/typed as the pdf.

Instead, I should have done it the smart way - with the proper use of the header command.

header('Content-type: application/pdf');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="filename.pdf"');

php

Of course, check out and read the entire header manual page for more.