7 Common Uses of PHP’s header() Function

This article introduces seven useful ways to employ PHP’s header() function.

1. Page redirection

header('Location:' . $url); // No space between Location and :

2. Declaring content‑type

header('content-type:text/html;charset=utf-8');

3. Returning HTTP response status code

header('HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found');

4. Timed redirect

header('Refresh: 10; url=http://www.baidu.com/'); // Redirect after 10 seconds

5. Controlling browser cache

header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");

header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");

header("Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate");

header("Pragma: no-cache");

6. HTTP authentication

header('HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized');

header('WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Top Secret"');

7. File download

header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream'); // Set content type

header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="example.zip"'); // Set as attachment

header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary'); // Set transfer encoding

header('Content-Length: ' . filesize('example.zip')); // Set content length