Download Files With CURL PHP (Simple Examples)

Welcome to a tutorial on how to download files with PHP CURL. Need to fetch a file from another server with PHP CURL? Yes, it is possible.

That should cover the basics, but let us walk through a few more examples in this guide – Read on!

 

 

TLDR – QUICK SLIDES

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

EXAMPLE 1) USING CURL TO DOWNLOAD FILES

<?php
// (A) SETTINGS
set_time_limit(0); // no script timeout
$source = "http://localhost/README.txt"; // target file to download
$destination = "saved.txt"; // save to this file
$timeout = 30; // 30 seconds curl timeout

// (B) FILE HANDLER
$fh = fopen($destination, "w") or exit("Error opening $destination");

// (C) CURL FETCH & SAVE
// (C1) CURL INIT
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $source);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fh);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, $timeout);

// (C2) CURL EXEC
// note: http status code 200 = ok
curl_exec($ch);
if (curl_errno($ch)) { echo curl_error($ch); }
else {
  $status = curl_getinfo($ch);
  // print_r($status);
  echo $status["http_code"] == 200 ? "OK" : "ERROR - " . $status["http_code"] ;
}

// (C3) CLOSE CURL & FILE
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fh);

Yes, this is practically just an “improved version” of the introduction snippet.

1. A bunch of settings, where to download the file from, where to save it to.
2. Creating an “empty file” on the local server.
3. Use CURL to download and save the specified source.

 

 

EXAMPLE 2) DOWNLOADING LARGE FILES

<?php
// (A) SETTINGS
set_time_limit(0); // no script timeout
$source = "http://localhost/README.txt"; // target file to download
$destination = "saved.txt"; // save to this file
$block = 4096; // read 4096 bytes per block

// (B) FILE HANDLERS
$sh = fopen($source, "rb") or exit("ERROR opening $source");
$dh = fopen($destination, "w") or exit("ERROR opening $destination");

// (C) DOWNLOAD, BLOCK-BY-BLOCK
while (!feof($sh)) {
  if (fwrite($dh, fread($sh, $block)) === false) { echo "FWRITE ERROR."; }
  flush();
}

// (D) DONE!
echo "DONE.";
fclose($sh);
fclose($dh);

If you are dealing with very large files, I will recommend dropping CURL and just use fopen() fwrite() fread() instead – We can limit the number of bytes fread() can read at once, to prevent an “out-of-memory” error.

 

EXAMPLE 3) SUPER SIMPLE DOWNLOAD

<?php
$source = "http://localhost/README.txt";
$destination = "saved.txt";
file_put_contents($destination, file_get_contents($source));
echo "OK";

For you guys who just want a really simple file download… We don’t actually even need CURL. Just file_put_contents() and file_get_contents().

 

 

 

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EXAMPLE CODE DOWNLOAD

Click here for the source code on GitHub gist, just click on “download zip” or do a git clone. I have released it under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.

 

 

 

LINKS & REFERENCES

• CURL – PHP
• fopen – PHP
• How To Write & Append To Files In PHP – Code Boxx

 

TUTORIAL VIDEO

 

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