How to automatically start a download in PHP ?

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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:

<!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.

<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  
    
// Initialize a file URL to  
// the variable  
$url =  
'https://write.zambiatek.com/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.";  
} 
?>  