How to make a link to download a server file on the browser?

Question

I am trying to create a simple download link

The file I want to download is a .pdf that the user can upload, and now I want to make it possible to download. With the pop-up box, you know, or just on the chrome download bar

I've tried what every answer says:

<a href="<?=$GUIDELINES_PDF_DIR . $projectId . '.pdf'?>" download="guidelines.pdf">Download PDF</a>

But that leads to "Failed - no file", even though when I check

 if(file_exists($GUIDELINES_PDF_DIR . $projectId . '.pdf'))

it returns true!

Some other notes:

• I'm pretty shaky on server things, so maybe the same link doesn't work on PHP and on HTML? In that case, how can I find the file?

• This link is within a <form>, so I don't really want to create another <form> inside it, or do anything that compromises the info that the user has inputed

Thank so much :)

Answer 1

Use a right headers:

header("Content-type:application/pdf");
header("Content-Disposition:attachment;filename='downloaded.pdf'");

Answer 2

$GUIDELINES_PDF_DIR is a directory on your server's hard disk.

The resulting path you are creating is relative to the root of your server's hard disk and not to the DocumentRoot of your web server.

You need to account for that difference when generating your URL.