Get rid of annoying .php extension when downloading: get, php, extension, filename, file

Get rid of annoying .php extension when downloading

Asked by: DaFox

Hi.

I'm trying to code a php download script. Everything works fine except when using Netscape.

The headers that I send look like this:

header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$filename\"");
header("Content-Length: ".$size);
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Connection: close");

If I use Netscape for downloading a file the download box pops up and asks for the location for filename.ext.php
All other browsers (IE, Opera) work fine (they download file filename.ext).

Where's the problem? What header is Netscape expecting?

Markus

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Hi Markus... I was just looking through the man page for header(), and came across these two comments which may help you out. The page can be found here:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.header.php

Comment 1
------------

Another general fix for many of the problems that occure when trying to prompt a filename to download is to append a '/' to your download URL. This fixes a NS7 problem where it wants to add a .PHP extension to all filenames.

For example, change:

http://www.url.com/download.php?file=23
to
http://www.url.com/download.php/?file=23

-------------

Comment 2
-------------
Regarding the Filename problems with NS7 / Mozilla when passing the filename via header("Content-Disposition:"). I have finally manged it to fix that problem with the *.php extension by sending a content-type of:

application/x-zip-compressed

and Mozilla does now recognize the .zip extension for my files.

Here is a short example:

if(stristr($HTTP_SERVER_VARS["HTTP_USER_AGENT"],"Gecko")) header("Content-type: application/x-zip-compressed\n");
else header("Content-type: application/zip");
header("Content-transfer-encoding: binary\n");
$head="Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=".$myname."\n";
header($head);
header("Content-Length: ".$mylength);

Hope that helps someone, it took quite some time to figure out this problem...

-------------

Hope those are helpful... Unfortunately, it is a bug within NS7, so it is most likely going to require a hack like this.

Regards,
Barry

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Get rid of annoying .php extension when downloading

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