Download files from server php

Question

I have a URL where I save some projects from my work, they are mostly MDB files, but some JPG and PDF are there too.

What I need to do is to list every file from that directory (already done) and give the user the option to download it.

How is that achieved using PHP?

Answer 1

To read directory contents you can use readdir() and use a script, in my example download.php, to download files

if ($handle = opendir('/path/to/your/dir/')) {
    while (false !== ($entry = readdir($handle))) {
        if ($entry != "." && $entry != "..") {
            echo "<a href='download.php?file=".$entry."'>".$entry."</a>
";
        }
    }
    closedir($handle);
}

In download.php you can force browser to send download data, and use basename() to make sure client does not pass other file name like ../config.php

$file = basename($_GET['file']);
$file = '/path/to/your/dir/'.$file;

if(!file_exists($file)){ // file does not exist
    die('file not found');
} else {
    header("Cache-Control: public");
    header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
    header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$file");
    header("Content-Type: application/zip");
    header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");

    // read the file from disk
    readfile($file);
}