Manipulate an Archive in memory with PHP (without creating a temporary file on disk)

Question

I am trying to generate an archive on-the-fly in PHP and send it to the user immediately (without saving it). I figured that there would be no need to create a file on disk

Answer 1

Regarding your comment that php://temp works for you except when you close it, try keeping it open, flushing the output, then rewind it back to 0 and read it.

Look here for more examples: http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.tmpfile.php

Also research output buffering and capturing: http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.ob-start.php