send zip file to browser / force direct download

Question

i created with php zip ( http://php.net/manual/de/book.zip.php ) a zip file

now i have to send it to the browser / force a download for it.

Answer 1

If you already have your ZIP on the server, and if this ZIP is reachable by Apache in HTTP or HTTPS, then, you should redirect to this file instead of "reading it" with PHP.

It's much more efficient as you don't use PHP, so no CPU or RAM are needed, and it will be faster to download, as no reading/writing by PHP needed too, only direct download. Let's Apache do the job!

So a nice function could be:

if($is_reachable){
    $file = $relative_path . $filename; // Or $full_http_link
    header('Location: '.$file, true, 302);
}
if(!$is_reachable){
    $file = $relative_path . $filename; // Or $absolute_path.$filename
    $size = filesize($filename); // The way to avoid corrupted ZIP
    header('Content-Type: application/zip');
    header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=' . $filename);
    header('Content-Length: ' . $size);
    // Clean before! In order to avoid 500 error
    ob_end_clean();
    flush();
    readfile($file);
}
exit(); // Or not, depending on what you need

I hope that it will help.