PHP: Get newly generated pdf in “save as..” popup

Question

<form  method="POST" action="createPDF.php">
<input type="text" id="myID" value="<?php echo $_SESSION['userSession']?>" style="display:none"/>
<input type="submit" value="showPDF"/>
</form>

I am sending myID variable to createPDF.php page and generating pdf file. I am using TCPDF library for pdf files. My createPDF.php code:

$myFile=$pdf->Output('mypdf001.pdf', 'I');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=' .$myFile);

I am getting save as popup with .php file or am being redirected to createPDF.php file. How to get save as pop up with .pdf file?

Answer 1

Depending on what your PHP configuration allows, you could try changing your form to

<form  method="POST" action="createPDF.php/myPDF001.pdf">

If your PHP configuration allows it, this will still run the createPDF.php file, but the browsers will be more likely to see it as a PDF file.

Also ensure that the content-type header is correctly set

header("Content-type:application/pdf");

Finally (although I'm not 100% sure if this makes a difference) set the headers before outputting the PDF

Answer 2

Have you set the content type before the content-disposition?

I think you are missing:

header('Content-Type: application/download');
header('Content-Type: application/pdf');

So you would have:

$myFile=$pdf->Output('mypdf001.pdf', 'I');  
header('Content-Type: application/download');
header('Content-Type: application/pdf');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=' .$myFile);