PHP: Readfile() works fine at localhost but not at server-CodePudding

I'm new to PHP. Here is my problem. I tried using readfile to download a pdf file and it works on localhost but on the online server well it prints the file contents with strange characters. I tried other codes but the same problem persists. I researched for several days and found nothing conclusive. So please help me. Here is everything I tried:

            $chemin = dirname(__FILE__,3)."/resultats_examens/".$Open;
            $fileName = basename($chemin);
            $filePath = $chemin;
            if(!empty($fileName) && file_exists($filePath)){
                header('Content-type: application/pdf'); 
                    
                header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename="' . $fileName . '"'); 
                    
                header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary'); 
                    
                header('Accept-Ranges: bytes'); 
                    
                // Lire le fichier
                @readfile($filePath);  }

I tried everything too :

                //Stocker le nom du fichier dans une variable
                //for any file
                $file = fopen($filePath, 'rb');
                if ( $file !== false ) {
                    fpassthru($file);
                    fclose($file);
                }
                //for any file, if fpassthru() is disabled
                $file = fopen($filePath, 'rb');
                if ( $file !== false ) {
                    while ( !feof($file) ) {
                        echo fread($file, 4096);
                    }
                    fclose($file);
                }
                //for small files;
                //this should not be used for large files, as it loads whole file into memory
                $data = file_get_contents($filePath);
                if ( $data !== false ) {
                    echo $data;
                }

And here is what is displayed on the screen:

  %PDF-1.7

  4 0 obj
  (Identity)
  endobj
  5 0 obj
  (Adobe)
  endobj
  8 0 obj
  <<
  /Filter /FlateDecode
  /Length 80044
  /Type /Stream
  >>
  stream
  x��   `T��?~�[f��o&��$3��L C$�$�

CodePudding user response：

It sounds like you've got a couple of problems. Here is my recipe for sending PDF files for download. I would try adding these to your code incrementally and see what solves the problem (don't just cargo-cult the whole thing).

<?php
$filePath = '/path/to/file.pdf';
$fileTime = filemtime($filePath);

header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/pdf');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.basename($filePath).'"');
header('Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header('Last-Modified: '.gmdate('D, j M Y H:i:s T', $fileTime));
header('Pragma: public');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($filePath));

ob_clean();
flush();
readfile($filePath);

CodePudding user response：

It is resolved. the problem is that I had used Ajax to pass variables to the download file. now i used window.location.href to pass the variables and open the download file. it works locally and on the server