Problem with force-downloading files with PHP

I have problem with force browser to download a file. I found that kind of solution my problem:

header("Content-type: application/force-download");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$name_of_file");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");
readfile($name_of_file);
exit;

But after that I have my file on screen. Even that make this same result:

header('content-type: text/xml开发者_如何学Python');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="$filename"');
echo "TEST";
exit;

Where could be a problem?

Unfortunately, attachment for the Content-Disposition header field is not supported that good. That’s why the Content-Type header field value is more important:

If [the Content-Disposition] header is used in a response with the application/octet-stream content-type, the implied suggestion is that the user agent should not display the response, but directly enter a `save response as...' dialog.

Although an unknown content type like application/force-download is supposed to be interpreted like application/octet-stream:

It is expected that many other subtypes of "application" will be defined in the future. MIME implementations must at a minimum treat any unrecognized subtypes as being equivalent to "application/octet-stream".

But you should better play it safe and use application/octet-stream explicitly.

<?php
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Content-Length: " . filesize($name_of_file));
header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=" . $name_of_file);
readfile($name_of_file);
die();

1) It is your responsibility to make sure that file does exist and is readable

2) It may be worth adding ob_end_clean(); before sending headers (in case you have sent something already)

EDIT: Removed useless ; as per comments from porneL, thnx

Just use:

header('Content-Disposition: attachment');

and combine that with mod_rewrite or such to put correct filename in the URL.

If you have Apache, but you're not using mod_rewrite, that works too;

http://example.com/download_script.php/nice_filename.xml

This causes download_script.php to be called. Browsers will "see" nice_filename.xml as the filename and you won't need the very messy and unreliable filename=… attribute.