PHP, SSL, File Output and Internet Explorer Error
While working on a project, everything was working on our beta site just fine. Once we moved the project to the production site, we ran into an issue on a page that exported a csv file of information inline. The only difference was that the production site was running SSL.
The basic situation is as follows. A script written on PHP, running on Apache, through a SSL connection is dynamically generating a file (in our case a csv) and then sending it to the client. This works correctly through Firefox, but returns an error in Internet Explorer. The error returned is:
Internet Explorer cannot download <url of link>
Internet Explorer was not able to open this Internet site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later.
Here’s a hint, no matter how many times you try again later, it will not work. I started with this code:
header("Content-type: application/csv\n");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$filename\"; size=$size");
After much research, I found the way to fix this is through the Pragma header, making sure it’s anything BUT off-cache. Once I add a new header, it worked fine through both Firefox and Internet Explorer:
header("Content-type: application/csv\n");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$filename\"; size=$size");
header("Pragma: turn-off-cache", true);
I just changed it to turn-off-cache, but anything typed in instead of off-cache would work fine.
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By Jay, 7/13/2006 @ 11:17 AM
I found your soution to be exactly what I needed to solved the problem I was having. Thanks!
By Jose, 7/26/2006 @ 11:18 AM
Thanks a lot, my production server works just fine now.
By tolleiv, 9/26/2006 @ 6:13 AM
Thanks you for sharing your experience – that saved my day. Thanks.
By Ben Wong, 4/27/2007 @ 2:57 PM
Dude! Thanks.
You saved me hours of time googling/debugging a script.
By Grateful, 12/3/2007 @ 10:27 PM
Another huge thanks! It would’ve taken me hours upon hours to find this work-around.