Serving large files with PHP

Question

So I am trying to serve large files via a PHP script, they are not in a web accessible directory, so this is the best way I can figure to provide access to them.

The

Answer 1

One of benefits of fpassthru() is that this function can work not only with files but any valid handle. Socket for example.

And readfile() must be a little faster, cause of using OS caching mechanism, if possible (as like as file_get_contents()).

One more tip. fpassthru() hold handle open, until client gets content (which may require quite a long time on slow connect), and so you must use some locking mechanism if parallel writes to this file possible.