php - Header location not working properly

Question

I have a php script that renders an image (with imagick) and saves it to some directory "SITE_ROOT.$filePath", then does a header('Location: ' . SITE_ROOT.$filePath), the file it redirects to is a png image.

If I go to the path directly, like just type it in the URL bar I can save the image and everything works fine, however when I rely on the script to redirect me and I try to right click and save the image it doesn't recognise that I'm actually trying to save an image, it thinks I'm trying to save it as a non-typed file called 'Driver' which is the name of the script page.

I have no idea what's wrong here, surely the header location should just take me to the image and have no record of the 'Driver' file after it has redirected?

The same thing happens with redirect() too btw.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Edit: This problem was solved by placing a die() after the header command.

Answer 1

You are using file paths which is not working with header location. You are supposed to use urls.

It's best practice to use absolute urls in header location. PHP documentation says:

HTTP/1.1 requires an absolute URI as argument to ? Location: including the scheme, hostname and absolute path, but some clients accept relative URIs. (Source)

Also always exit the script afterwards because otherwise in my experience in certain circumstances code that comes after the redirect might still be executed. So a good example would look like this:

header("location:http://www.mysite.com/path/to/myfile.php");
exit;

Often you would use a server variable for this case:

$url = $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"]."/path/to/myfile.php";
header("location:".$url);
exit;

Cheers!