Why is my downloaded file is always damaged or corrupted?

Question

I have a very weird problem with my download script

it basically

1.gets a file id with "GET" method

2.gets the name and location

Answer 1

Your script may contain NOTICE or WARNING, try disabling error reporting on top of your script:

error_reporting(0);

Answer 2

Make sure you do not have any code executed after the last line readfile(FILE_NAME)

I had to add die(); or exit(); as the last line, because MVC framework continues to render the view after readfile

Answer 3

That seems allot of code just to force-download, here is a nice function I use all the time. It will handle files over 2GB too.

<?php 
$file_id = (isset($_GET['id']) && (int)$_GET['id'] != 0) ? (int)$_GET['id'] : exit;

/*finding file info*/
$file = comon::get_all_by_condition('files', 'id', $file_id);
$path = $file['location'] . '/' . $file['file_name'];

if (!is_file($path)) {
    echo 'File not found.('.$path.')';
} elseif (is_dir($path)) {
    echo 'Cannot download folder.';
} else {
    send_download($path);
}

return;

//The function with example headers
function send_download($file) {
    $basename = basename($file);
    $length   = sprintf("%u", filesize($file));

    header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
    header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
    header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' . $basename . '"');
    header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
    header('Connection: Keep-Alive');
    header('Expires: 0');
    header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
    header('Pragma: public');
    header('Content-Length: ' . $length);

    set_time_limit(0);
    readfile($file);
}
?>

Answer 4

Very nice, helpful also...

but there is a problem in your code -

header('Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="'.basename($file).'"';

please change it with this following -

header('Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="'.basename($file).'"');

you are forgot to close it.

Answer 5

    if (file_exists($file)) {
set_time_limit(0);
        header('Connection: Keep-Alive');
    header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
            header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
            header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.basename($file).'"');
            header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
            header('Expires: 0');
            header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
            header('Pragma: public');
            header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
            ob_clean();
            flush();
            readfile($file);


}