php Using header() to force download not working in Chrome or Firefox

[game_over]

I have created an mp3 downloader script which forces downloads of MP3s that are located outside of the web root. I've received a few support requests saying it's not working.. I originally only tested it in Safari and it worked fine, so I tested it in Chrome and Firefox and can confirm it returns a 404 error in both of those browsers.

In Chrome console it shows: net::ERR_INVALID_RESPONSE

download.php:

header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
header("Content-Type: {$mime}");
header("Pragma: public");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Content-Type: application/force-download"); 
header("Content-Type: application/download");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename={$filename}");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Content-Length: " . filesize($file));
while(ob_get_level()) ob_end_clean();
flush();
readfile($file);
exit;

 

I have checked all paths and variables.. everything is set, exists and readable.

If i remove application/force-download and application-download it loads the in browser mp3 player but returns a 404... so it looks like it can't find the file outside of web root - does Chrome/Firefox not allow that?

It is definitely working in Safari

Any ideas?

[pqt]

Check your Inspect Element tool on Chrome and see if it's blocking it client sided, I ran into issues with loading javascript files / modifying css through an iframe for security reasons. If you're on a windows device using safari, you're using a very outdated version (merely an assumption you're on windows) which may not have included a patch for cross-site anything.

I know that you get into a really grey area when you start using cross-site downloads without the appropriate allow-content headers on the receiving and requesting servers.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

A few of these headers are meaningless outside of email (Content-Description and Content-Transfer-Encoding), and overwriting the content-type multiple times won't help much either (You ideally want to either use the original mime-type, or application/octet-stream. I have no idea what uses "download" or "force-download").

It returning a 404 is the more likely problem, PHP is actually using the $filename and $mime in the headers right? (Been ages since I've used PHP) It's also odd that you're just downing normal string concatenation for the filesize, but not for other headers.

[game_over]

A few of these headers are meaningless outside of email (Content-Description and Content-Transfer-Encoding), and overwriting the content-type multiple times won't help much either (You ideally want to either use the original mime-type, or application/octet-stream. I have no idea what uses "download" or "force-download").

It returning a 404 is the more likely problem, PHP is actually using the $filename and $mime in the headers right? (Been ages since I've used PHP) It's also odd that you're just downing normal string concatenation for the filesize, but not for other headers.

Thanks for your input, i removed the 'meaningless' headers and it still works in Safari so i'll leave those out. It didn't fix the chrome issue though.

[DeathLace]

This has always worked for me:

• $file = "filename.ext";
•  
• // Quick check to verify that the file exists
• if( !file_exists($file) ) die("File not found");
•  
• // Force the download
• header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="" . basename($file) . """);
• header("Content-Length: " . filesize($file));
• header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream;");
• readfile($file);