Force a PDF to download

Hey! That worked perfectly, thanks! You might indicate that one needs mod_headers to use Header set.

Do I put this code in the .htaccess file or what?

Hey, great explanation. Thanks for the well written explanation and for the code sample(s).

Really Interesting document, but how would you use that if apache is a proxyserver?

Hi,

I can't get this to work in .htaccess, I asked around and someone said that the regex was wrong.

Any idea how I can get it to work?

For this technique applied to other web servers and languages such as PHP, check out http://www.stuvel.eu/pdfdownload ;-)

Thanks!

Just what I was looking for ;)

I've been trying to do this for 6 months. Worked perfectly. I love you, sir (platonically)

This is just what i was lokking for! Thanks for the explanation! I will be linking to your post :-)

Thanks, the Internet Explorer specific Header Set and RegEx tip really helped!

Thanks a bunch! Works like a charm, you spared us all a headache :)!!!

I just copy and paste to .htaccess file, but getting internal error. Do you have any idea what would be wrong?

I try to use this trick to open a download window from the browser instead of displaying an image.

<Files *.*>
  ForceType applicaton/octet-stream
  Header set Content-Disposition attachment
</Files>

it works in Mozilla, but not on IE. the mod_headers module is enabled ...

I'm horrible at regular expressions; How could I modify that to force download of all file types? I have a folder full of different file types for clients to download, and this would save them time.

Thanks for solution,
regular expression \.[Pp][Dd][Ff] also can be used

Thanks for this tip, works perfectly in everything but safari.. looking for a solution to that problem now..

PS. Drupal rocks!

I run the IT direction for several companies and occasionally need to offer files for download without going through the hassle of creating stub pages, or explaining (again!) to users that email isn't the best place to attach a 10MB file.

I stopped by to mention that the code above also works quite well within Apache VirtualHosts directives. Simply include the block above inside the appropriate virtual host, such as "download.mydomain.com" and you can serve your files via HTTP, leaving the rest of your subdomains (such as "www") to serve the content you have time to write.

One quite valuable side-effect is that this also allows administrators to split download functions to another server (read: faster connection) when demand surpasses capacity...without rewriting everything you've done to provide downloadable content.

To wit, thank you; you saved me enough research time that I could stop to...hopefully :)...add value to your writeup. Cheers!

First of all FilesMatch does not work in older versions of Apache.

Secondly, it is far easier to alter the mime types. Just add this to your .htaccess file:

AddType application/octet-stream .pdf

Is it possible that this doesnt works with IE6?

If you search the net there have been known issues with ie6 not setting the headers correctly. Nick, did't we come across this issue with some of the websites at ew? I'm sure this rings a bell with the conference team saying they had users that couldn't download pdfs and i'm sure they were IE6 users.

Thanks just what I was looking for!!!

It works on apache 2.2 with mozilla 3+, chrome 4.1+ and IE 8

it is very useful! thx!

Working as intended, thanks!

I was so excited to come across this, but then I couldn't get it to work for what I need to do :( I imagine this is just me doing something wrong or inadvertently doing something else that's impeding the effectiveness of this, but... here goes...

I'm actually trying to do the opposite, client doesn't like the "open/save" dialog, wants to eliminate this "extra step" to view the document (granted, the primary purpose of the website in question is to organize & view files). I looked around and came up with "inline" as the alternative to/opposite of "attachment" -- is this the case, and if not, what is?

The whole thing is really weird -- certain PDFs on this website open right in the browser the way they want, but the vast majority don't. (When I say "open right in the browser" what I actually mean is "follow your browser settings, like in Firefox whatever you set at Tools > Options > Applications.) I even tested a PDF file from a different website I manage -- this file opens in your browser when you click on a link to it from the other website, but when I put it on my problem-website, I end up with the "open/save" dialog. Gaaahhhh!!

If nothing else, can anyone offer advice to help me figure out WHAT is affecting this behavior, and/or HOW to tell whether or not I've used the FilesMatch thing correctly (so at least I can know if/when to stop trying this and look for something else)?

Some details about my problem-website that may be important -- it's on Drupal 6.15, it's a password-protected site and I'm using the Private Download module. The Apache version is 2.2, with PHP 5.2.13 and MySQL 5.0.77.

I greatly appreciate any help you can offer -- but of course, if this is totally beyond what you had in mind for the scope of this, just say the word :) Thank you!

(a) Never mind.......... while I'm not certain that I updated my .htaccess file(s) correctly, I am certain that other "things" (in this case, the Private Download module) were in the way of the .htaccess fix working anyway.

(b) I ended up learning a tiny bit more about file headers that I will share just in case it's useful for anyone: Alternative syntax for setting file header attributes, depending on where you're doing it, goes something like:
Content-Disposition: inline

(In case some context is helpful...) In my situation, I set this attribute right after the two file header attribute settings that the module included by default, Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary\nCache-Control: max-age=60, must-revalidate

Maybe someone could offer an explanation of what one would "call" this situation -- like, to fill in the blanks of a sentence such as "Here's how to set file header attributes -- if [blank], do it like [this], if [blank], do it like [this]..."

Thanks everyone, and sorry if all of this was "outside the scope."

Hi Nick -- Thanks so much for your answer, I JUST posted a reply to myself like 10 seconds ago, apparently I should have refreshed the page before doing so :)

If you have another minute, I'd greatly appreciate your thoughts on what ended up fixing my issue -- it sounds like what I did could have been the "sending a generic header to force the download" you suggested?

Thanks again for your help!

The Content-Disposition Header could cause problems in IE when leading the user to the file with a window.open() and since we are already forcing type octet-stream it will already force the browser to download the file since no browser will try to show a octete-stream to the user.

<FilesMatch "\.(?i:pdf)$">
  ForceType application/octet-stream
</FilesMatch>

For some reason this doesn't seem to work in the current Dev versions of Google Chrome (11.0.696.14). I am not sure why. Do you know of any other way to fix this? Thanks!

Hi thanks, It was useful and works!

Hi,

Some people directly use:
AddType application/octet-stream .pdf

Inside htaccess. Do you know wich's better?

Thanks!

Thanks. Just tried it, and it works. Awesome!

Aweseome this worked perfectly! x

Many many thanks for posting this! It works on IE, Safari, Chrome and Firefox here!
Force download through .htaccess doesn't work on IE, so you have to edit httpd.conf.

Many thanks for posting this - saved me a long trawl through Apache docs!

This solution is even better. Thanks HEAPS.

Works perfect with different Mac OS X browsers - but it doesn't work with iPhone 4S & Safari. Any Idea?

thank you very much, i've not tried on IE yet, but it works just fine with other browsers

i used to compress the pdf's and link them after that, thanks for the tip!