Three Ways to Download Files in PHP

This article demonstrates three PHP techniques for serving file downloads.

1. Direct link: embed a button with an anchor tag, for example <button><a href="http://localhost/down.zip">Download File</a></button> , which lets the browser download the file directly.

2. Parameter‑based redirect: pass a query parameter (e.g., http://localhost?f='down' ) and use PHP to construct the file name, verify its existence, and issue a Location header to the file URL, returning a 404 response if the file is missing. Sample code: <?php $down = $_GET['f']; $filename = $down . '.zip'; $dir = "down/"; $down_host = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '/'; if (file_exists(__DIR__ . '/' . $dir . $filename)) { header('Location: http://' . $down_host . $dir . $filename); } else { header('HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found'); } ?>

3. Streamed download with head() and fread() : open the file in binary mode, send appropriate headers ( Content-Type: application/octet-stream , Accept-Ranges: bytes , Content-Length , Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=... ), read the file with fread , echo its contents, then close the handle. Sample code: <?php $file_name = "down.zip"; $file_dir = "./down/"; if (!file_exists($file_dir . $file_name)) { header('HTTP/1.1 404 NOT FOUND'); exit; } $file = fopen($file_dir . $file_name, "rb"); header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream'); header('Accept-Ranges: bytes'); header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file_dir . $file_name)); header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=' . $file_name); echo fread($file, filesize($file_dir . $file_name)); fclose($file); exit; ?>

The first two methods are straightforward but expose the actual file path, whereas the third method hides the path and provides better security.