Change filename from URL when user downloads file

Question

File links are all http://website.com/f/xxx.png/zip/txt and so on.
I need to set it up so that if a user downloads that file it would download with a different name.
I have seen how to do this on a normal page, but I have no clue how making it work when the image itself is linked to is done.

Appreciate any help :)

Edit: Using the rewrite Steven Jeffries posted,

header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename=' . $originalFileName . "'");
header("Content-Type:" . $mimeType);
$im = imagecreatefrompng($filePathOnServer);
imagepng($im);

to display images and

header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=' . $originalFileName . "'");
header("Content-Type:" . $mimeType);

to make other files download solved the issues I had.

Alon Eitan · Accepted Answer · 2025-02-10 05:59:36Z

2

I think an easy way to do this would be to redirect download links to another script that handles what to download, etc. Basically, I'd set up a download dir, add some rewrite rules, and then create a script to handle what gets output.

Something like this (untested):

/path-to-web-root/download/.htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^.* /downloads/handle-downloads.php

/path-to-web-root/download/handle-downloads.php

$url = trim($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/');

if (preg_match('^#downloads/(?<real_filename>.*?)/(?<options>.*)/(?<fake_filename>.*)$#', $url, $matches)) {
    // Double check my regex, but basically pull the real filename from the url here
    $actual_file = "/path-to-webroot/f/{$matches['real_filename']}";
    $options = explode('/', $matches['options']);
    if (in_array('zip', $options)) {
        // Handle zip, etc.
    }
    
    $fake_filename = $matches['fake_filename'];

    if (file_exists($actual_file)) {
        header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
        header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
        header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.basename($fake_filename).'"');
        header('Expires: 0');
        header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
        header('Pragma: public');
        header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($actual_file));
        readfile($actual_file);
        exit;
    }
}

Then, instead of having the download link being website.com/f/xxx.png/zip/txt, you could instead do website.com/download/xxx.png/zip/txt/new-filename.png. This would allow you to set the filename to whatever you wanted since the browser will just take what's at the end of the url.

Edit: I've included the relevant code from readfile's manual page.

edited Feb 10 at 5:59

Alon Eitan

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answered Feb 9, 2017 at 0:15

Steven Jeffries

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5 Comments

Rasmus Larsen Over a year ago

This seems like something I could adapt to my case, thanks a lot. I'll try it and mark as solved if it works first thing in the morning.

Rasmus Larsen Over a year ago

I am having issues displaying images with readfile, but your answer helped me answer the actual question, so thanks! I am setting the mime stuff correctly, but the page still reads as the image data in text form, any helping clues here? :b

Steven Jeffries Over a year ago

Yes, sorry, my example is very general and minimal. You'll still have to set the correct headers depending on the file, etc. You probably want to use the function imagepng instead of readfile: php.net/manual/en/function.imagepng.php

Steven Jeffries Over a year ago

Actually, upon looking at the manual, I don't think it matters, readfile will just output the bytes. I've updated my answer with the relevant code from readfile: php.net/manual/en/function.readfile.php

Rasmus Larsen Over a year ago

So if I want to display an image without downloading by default and changing the filename if they save the image, would I have to "re-draw" the image first every time?

Jan Rydrych · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-09 00:14:49Z

1

You can set the file response file name by setting header parameter.

For example:

<?php
header('Content-Type: image/png');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="xyz.png"');
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
...

More on PHP header function here: http://php.net/manual/en/function.header.php

answered Feb 9, 2017 at 0:14

Jan Rydrych

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