Force link to download image not open

[davelf]

Hi, how to force a link to download image files, instead of open it in the browser. Thanks.

[djr33]

You can google this, "force download". But it makes use of tricking the browser and it works most of the time, but it's not really a proper technique. You also need to change the headers on the server or through a serverside language, so you can't do this easily, such as with the image file itself.

[james438]

Here is a link to an example script. It's fun to use, but I have not had any need for it yet.

link (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63292&p=256149)

I tested it out just now in the Opera browser and it worked just fine.

[davelf]

Thanks @Daniel find the solution using that keyword.
Now i use this code on htaccess:


AddType application/octet-stream .jpg


and it work.


thanks @james438 for that code. But all of my code are pure HTML.

[james438]

I was not aware of that little trick. I want to add that I discovered that it does not work if the image is already displayed on the same page with the link to the image.

[davelf]

@James,

I try your code, and i'm a little bit confuse with all of that PHP thing.
But i try to take the main part, here:



<?php
// Define the image type. We can remove this but not recommended
header("Content-type: image/jpeg");

// Define the name of image after downloaded
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="bg_about1.jpg"');

// Read the original image file
readfile('bg_about1.jpg');
?>


and to download the image i use this link:

<a href="download.php">download</a>


it work, but the other problem. each download.php (code above) can carry only 1 image.
So there's another problem if i have multiple image to download.

[djr33]

The .htaccess method seems like a good one. I didn't think of that. Technically it's a serverside language, but it's a lot easier to deal with than PHP in this case when serving images.


I want to add that I discovered that it does not work if the image is already displayed on the same page with the link to the image.That's solvable, actually. Just add a dummy query string to one or the other:
..../images/myimage.jpg?randomtext

Often, md5(microtime()) can be used in PHP to achieve this. Or just a random number.

Or, in fact, even just the '?' will work, because it's technically a different URL than the one used on the page.

(The only disadvantage here is that it would require downloading the same image twice-- twice the bandwidth, twice the waiting, but that's probably not a major concern.