forcing downloading dialog box

The trouble I am having is forcing a dialog box to appear for downloadable items, which will allow the user to save the file to their local machine. Currently it simply opens a new page in the browser and opens the file there. I know why this occurs and that is simply because web browsers have the ability to open many different file types and this is the default setting. I wont to have the ability of saying which files must be forced to download to the users local machine and which ones can open within the browser for example pdf’s.

PLease help

Fri, 02/13/2009 - 10:10

saul11

Joined: 19/06/2006

Posts: 633

Re: forcing downloading dialog box

You can force downloade of files by setting headers, google will tell you more.

For PHP I have this function:

// force download of data provided as string
function forceDownload($data, $name, $mimetype='', $filesize=false)
{
   if ($filesize == false || !is_numeric($filesize))
   {
      $filesize = strlen($data);
   }

   if (empty($mimetype))
   {
      $mimetype = 'application/octet-stream';
   }

   header('Pragma: public'); // required
   header('Expires: 0');
   header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
   header('Cache-Control: private', false); // required for certain browsers
   header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
   header('Content-Type: ' . $mimetype);
   header('Content-Length: ' . $filesize);
   header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' . $name . '";' );

   echo $data;
}