Download file from URL using CURL

Question

I try to download file using a php-script from an URL like the following:

http://www.xcontest.org/track.php?t=2avxjsv1.igc

The code I use looks like the following, but it produces empty download files only:

$DLFile= "testfile.igc";
$DLURL="http://www.xcontest.org/track.php?t=2avxjsv1.igc"; 
$fp = fopen ($DLFile, 'w+');
$ch = curl_init($DLURL);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);

An other strange thing is when entering the URL in the web browser I don't get the file. It can I could only download the file when clicking the link on the web site !.

Any advice is very appreciated!

Answer 1

Give this a go

<?php

    $output_filename = "testfile.igc";

    $host = "http://www.xcontest.org/track.php?t=2avxjsv1.igc";
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $host);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, false);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, "http://www.xcontest.org");
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION, CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    print_r($result); // prints the contents of the collected file before writing..


    // the following lines write the contents to a file in the same directory (provided permissions etc)
    $fp = fopen($output_filename, 'w');
    fwrite($fp, $result);
    fclose($fp);
?>

#

or if you want to put it within a loop for parsing several links... you need some functions.. here is a rough idea....

 <?php function collect_file($url){ $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, false); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, "http://www.xcontest.org"); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION, CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); $result = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); return($result); } function write_to_file($text,$new_filename){ $fp = fopen($new_filename, 'w'); fwrite($fp, $text); fclose($fp); } // start loop here $new_file_name = "testfile.igc"; $url = "http://www.xcontest.org/track.php?t=2avxjsv1.igc"; $temp_file_contents = collect_file($url); write_to_file($temp_file_contents,$new_file_name) // end loop here ?>

Answer 2

@Chris' answer works, but this seems to work better to download very large files without running out of memory, since it doesn't download the whole file into a variable before writing to disk:

$file_url = 'http://www.test.com/images/avatar.png';
$destination_path = "downloads/avatar.png";

$fp = fopen($destination_path, "w+");

$ch = curl_init($file_url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_exec($ch);
$st_code = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);

if($st_code == 200)
 echo 'File downloaded successfully!';
else
 echo 'Error downloading file!';

Source: https://www.kodingmadesimple.com/2018/02/php-download-file-from-url-curl.html

Answer 3

I had some issues making the (File Download Dialog Box) show up when using Curl until i did this :

// $ch = curl_init();
// curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); 
// Other Curl options ....
$output = curl_exec($ch);
if (isset($_POST["downloadExcelFile"])){ 
        // in my code the "downloadExcelFile" field
        // is sent when i'm trying to download an excel file
        header('Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel');
        header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="file.xls"');
        header('Cache-Control: max-age=0');
        $fp = fopen("php://output", 'w');
        fwrite($fp, $output );
        fclose($fp);
    }