correct PHP headers for pdf file download

php pdf header
useyourillusiontoo picture useyourillusiontoo · Nov 19, 2013 · Viewed 286.5k times · Source

I'm really struggling to get my application to open a pdf when the user clicks on a link.

So far the anchor tag redirects to a page which sends headers that are:

$filename='./pdf/jobs/pdffile.pdf;

$url_download = BASE_URL . RELATIVE_PATH . $filename;

header("Content-type:application/pdf");
header("Content-Disposition:inline;filename='$filename");
readfile("downloaded.pdf");

this doesn't seem to work, has anybody successfully sorted this problem in the past?

Answer

gat picture gat · Nov 19, 2013

Example 2 on w3schools shows what you are trying to achieve.

<?php
header("Content-type:application/pdf");

// It will be called downloaded.pdf
header("Content-Disposition:attachment;filename='downloaded.pdf'");

// The PDF source is in original.pdf
readfile("original.pdf");
?>

Also remember that,

It is important to notice that header() must be called before any actual output is sent (In PHP 4 and later, you can use output buffering to solve this problem)

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