How to automatically start a download in PHP ?

This post deals with creating a start downloading file using PHP. The idea is to make a download button which will redirect you to another page with the PHP script that will automatically start the download.

Creating a download button:

html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
    <meta name="viewport" content=
        "width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    <style>
        .btn {
            background-color: limeGreen;
            border: none;
            color: white;
            padding: 12px 30px;
            cursor: pointer;
            font-size: 20px;
        }

        .btn:hover {
            background-color: green;
        }
    </style>
</head>

<body>
    <center>
        <p>Auto width:</p>
        <button class="btn">
            <i class="fa fa-download">Download</i>
        </button>
        <p>Full width:</p>
        <button class="btn" style="width:100%">
            <i class="fa fa-download">Download</i>
        </button>
    </center>
</body>

</html>

Output:

To redirect to some file which has the file to be downloaded, create an HTML form as shown below.

html

<form action="downloadFile.php" method="post">
 <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Download" />
</form>

Output:

PHP code to download: When the user clicks the above button, the code will be redirected to the "downloadFile.php" file. Now, use the URL of the file and PHP file_get_contents() function to download the file.

php

<?php 
  
// Initialize a file URL to 
// the variable 
$url = 
'https://write.geeksforgeeks.org/wp-content/uploads/gfg-40.png'; 
  
// Use basename() function to 
// return the file  
$file_name = basename($url); 
   
// Use file_get_contents() function 
// to get the file from url and use 
// file_put_contents() function to 
// save the file by using base name 
if(file_put_contents( $file_name, 
      file_get_contents($url))) { 
    echo "File downloaded successfully"; 
} 
else { 
    echo "File downloading failed."; 
}
?>

Output:

Before running the program:
After running the program:

How to automatically start a download in PHP ?

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