CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpdownload
vaichidrewar
vaichidrewar

Reputation: 9621

How i can create a file on-the-fly in php and download it

I have the following php script which checks the submitted value of the check-box elements and prints their values if those were checked. 

<?php
echo '<table class="features-table">';

echo "<tbody>";
for ($i=1;$i<=2284;$i+=1) {
  if($_POST[$i]) {
    echo"<tr>";
            echo "<td><a href=http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/" . $_POST[$i] . ">" . $_POST[$i].  "</a></td>";
    echo "</tr>";
  }
}

?>

I want to make this data shown to the user, available for download as text file. How should I create the download button. Do I need separate php script in that case how will I get the form data submitted to this php script?

From google search I got that I need to use code similar to below

header("Content-type: text/plain");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=list.txt");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");
echo 'data1,data2,data3...';

But I am not getting how do I integrate it with current php script.

Thanks

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2963

Answers (2)

vaichidrewar
vaichidrewar

Reputation: 9621

Posting the code which may help others in future

After the answer by sudip I did the following changes

<?php
$list = "Unknown words from GSL\n\n";
    echo '<table class="features-table">';
    echo "<tbody>";
    for ($i=1;$i<=2284;$i+=1) {
      if($_POST[$i]) {
        echo"<tr>";
                echo "<td><a href=http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/" . $_POST[$i] . ">" . $_POST[$i].  "</a></td>";
                $list = $list . $_POST[$i] . "\n";
        echo "</tr>";
      }
    }

echo'
   <form action="download.php" method="post">
   <input type="hidden" name="wordlist" value="'. $list . '">

   <center><input type="submit" name="submit_parse" style="margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 10px;width:200px; font-face: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: larger; " value=" Download as a text file "> </center>
   </form>
';
?>

I had to create separate php file since header() must be called before any actual output is sent, either by normal HTML tags, blank lines in a file, or from PHP.

Contents of download.php

<?php
header("Content-type: text/plain");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=list.txt");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");
echo $_POST["wordlist"] ;
?>

Upvotes: 1

sudip
sudip

Reputation: 2850

I dont see any necessity to create a file on the fly.

I would do it in the following way....

Make the data available as hidden fields and enclose the fields in a form tag along with the download button. When a user clicks the download button, all the form data will be available in the script. Then you can do whatever action you want to do with the data.

Upvotes: 1

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