Download link instead of open

[Tom Gao]

is there a way to force a download say if I point a url to a html file or a
pdf file instead of opening it just force it to download it ?

Thanks
Tom

 

[WindAndWaves]

is there a way to force a download say if I point a url to a html file or a
pdf file instead of opening it just force it to download it ?

Thanks
Tom

Documents are always downloaded - except streaming objects - what do you
want to achieve?

 

[Tom Gao]

I want to click on a link on the page and have a box popup which say do you
want to save as...
and save the HTML file instead of opening it in the browser

Tom

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Tom Gao wrote:

[top-posting corrected]

I want to click on a link on the page and have a box popup which
say do you want to save as... and save the HTML file instead of
opening it in the browser

Place a message on the page to advise your visitors to use:

1. File > Save As... choice on their browser's menu.
2. Right-click > Save As...

You cannot force anything.

 

[Duende]

While sitting in a puddle Beauregard T. Shagnasty scribbled in the mud:

You cannot force anything.

Yes you can.
I forced the lid off a jar of peanut butter today.

 

[Neal]

is there a way to force a download say if I point a url to a html file
or a
pdf file instead of opening it just force it to download it ?

Might be the first time this year this question has been asked! (Of
course, we neglect the 200 times last year...)

The answer is simply, no, no and, yes. No, I'm kidding. No.

 

[Travis Newbury]

While sitting in a puddle Beauregard T. Shagnasty scribbled in the mud:
Yes you can.
I forced the lid off a jar of peanut butter today.

Did you? Or did the peanuts finally just give in?

 

[Peter - nativespace hosting]

is there a way to force a download say if I point a url to a html
file or a pdf file instead of opening it just force it to download it
?

Thanks
Tom

You could zip the file up. The best thing to do is put a message near the
download link advising the user to right click, and 'save as'.

 

[Leif K-Brooks]

Might be the first time this year this question has been asked! (Of
course, we neglect the 200 times last year...)

Don't you mean 365*27 times last year?

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

While sitting in a puddle Beauregard T. Shagnasty scribbled in the
mud:


Yes you can. I forced the lid off a jar of peanut butter today.

Must have been a jar of Windows Peanut Butter. ;-)

 

[jhebbel]

WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!!

I really hate it when people come on forums and ask legitimate question and halfwitted programming hacks shoot them down and tell them its impossible....

There are 2 ways to do this, thats right not only is it NOT IMPOSSIBLE, there are 2 ways to do it!!!!

Option 1, place your DL's inside a specific folder and create an .htaccess file to tell the browser to serve these as downloads instead of content.

<FilesMatch "\.(html|jpg|png|gif)$">
 header set Content-Disposition attachment
</FilesMatch>

Option 2, use a PHP script to serve the file with a modified header:

<?php
// Make sure only files in this directory are accessible by removing slashes
$file = str_replace('/','',$_GET['file']);
$file = str_replace('\\','',$file);
// If the file doesn't exist, show an error message and leave
if(!file_exists('downloads/' . $file) {
  header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
  echo 'The selected file doesn\'t exist';
  exit;
}
// Tell the browser to download the file
header('Content-type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment');
// Output the file data
echo file_get_contents('downloads/' . $file);
?>