Make PHP faster for users with file downloads

download files by simply having the URL point to a file located under document root.

But, doing so, there is no way to do some statistics, permission checks, etc. work. So, a lot of times, we use the PHP to do forwarding, for users to provide file downloads .

$file = "/tmp/dummy.tar.gz";

Header ("Content-type:application/octet-stream");

Header (' Content-disposition:attachment filename= '. basename ($file). ' "');

Header (" Content-length: "). FileSize ($file));

ReadFile ($file);

But there is a problem, if the file is a Chinese name, some users may download the file name is garbled.

So, let's make changes (reference::

$file = "/tmp/Chinese name. tar.gz";

$filename = basename ($file);

Header ("Content-type:application/octet-stream");

//process Chinese file name

$ua = $_server["Http_user_agent"] ;

$encoded _filename = UrlEncode ($filename);

$encoded _filename = str_replace ("+", "%20", $encoded _filename);

if (Preg_match ("/msie/", $ua)) {

header (' Content-disposition:attachment; filename= “' . $encoded _filename. ' "');

} else if (Preg_match ("/firefox/", $ua)) {

Header (content-disposition:attachment filename*= "UTF8") $filename. ' "');

} else {

header (' Content-disposition:attachment filename= '. $filename. ' "');

}

header (' Content-disposition:attachment filename= '. $filename. ' "');

Header (" Content-length: "). FileSize ($file));

ReadFile ($file);

Output, if it is Apache + PHP mod, then you need to send to Apache's output buffer. Last sent to the user. For Nginx + FPM, if they were deployed separately, it would also bring in additional network IO.

Well, it looks a lot better now, but there's a problem, that's ReadFile, though PHP's ReadFile try to be as efficient as possible, without consuming PHP's own memory, But in fact it still needs to use MMAP (if supported), or a fixed buffer to iterate through the file, direct output.

Today, I saw an interesting article: how I php:x-sendfile.

We can use the Apache module Mod_xsendfile to have Apache send this file directly to the user:

$file = "/tmp/Chinese name. tar.gz";

$ filename = basename ($file);

Header ("Content-type:application/octet-stream");

//handling Chinese file name

$ua = $_server["Http_user_agent"];

$encoded _filename = UrlEncode ($filename);

$encoded _ filename = str_replace ("+", "%20", $encoded _filename);

if (Preg_match ("/msie/", $ua)) {

header (' C Ontent-disposition:attachment filename= "'. $encoded _filename. ' "');

} else if (Preg_match ("/firefox/", $ua)) {

header (" Content-disposition:attachment Filenam e*= "UTF8 '". $filename. ' "');

} else {

header (' Content-disposition:attachment filename= '. $filename. ' "');

}

header (' Content-disposition:attachment filename= '. basename ($file). ' "');

//Let xsendfile send files

Header ("X-sendfile: $file");

Lighttpd and Nginx have similar modules that you can look for. The X-sendfile header will be processed by Apache and send the response file directly to the client.