Streaming a large file using PHP
Use fpassthru()
. As the name suggests, it doesn't read the entire file into memory prior to sending it, rather it outputs it straight to the client.
Modified from the example in the manual:
<?php
// the file you want to send
$path = "path/to/file";
// the file name of the download, change this if needed
$public_name = basename($path);
// get the file's mime type to send the correct content type header
$finfo = finfo_open(FILEINFO_MIME_TYPE);
$mime_type = finfo_file($finfo, $path);
// send the headers
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$public_name;");
header("Content-Type: $mime_type");
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($path));
// stream the file
$fp = fopen($path, 'rb');
fpassthru($fp);
exit;
If you would rather stream the content directly to the browser rather than a download (and if the content type is supported by the browser, such as video, audio, pdf etc) then remove the Content-Disposition header.
Try something like this (source http://teddy.fr/2007/11/28/how-serve-big-files-through-php/):
<?php
define('CHUNK_SIZE', 1024*1024); // Size (in bytes) of tiles chunk
// Read a file and display its content chunk by chunk
function readfile_chunked($filename, $retbytes = TRUE) {
$buffer = '';
$cnt = 0;
$handle = fopen($filename, 'rb');
if ($handle === false) {
return false;
}
while (!feof($handle)) {
$buffer = fread($handle, CHUNK_SIZE);
echo $buffer;
ob_flush();
flush();
if ($retbytes) {
$cnt += strlen($buffer);
}
}
$status = fclose($handle);
if ($retbytes && $status) {
return $cnt; // return num. bytes delivered like readfile() does.
}
return $status;
}
// Here goes your code for checking that the user is logged in
// ...
// ...
if ($logged_in) {
$filename = 'path/to/your/file';
$mimetype = 'mime/type';
header('Content-Type: '.$mimetype );
readfile_chunked($filename);
} else {
echo 'Tabatha says you haven\'t paid.';
}
?>
I found this method in http://codesamplez.com/programming/php-html5-video-streaming-tutorial
And it works very well for me
<?php
class VideoStream
{
private $path = "";
private $stream = "";
private $buffer = 102400;
private $start = -1;
private $end = -1;
private $size = 0;
function __construct($filePath)
{
$this->path = $filePath;
}
/**
* Open stream
*/
private function open()
{
if (!($this->stream = fopen($this->path, 'rb'))) {
die('Could not open stream for reading');
}
}
/**
* Set proper header to serve the video content
*/
private function setHeader()
{
ob_get_clean();
header("Content-Type: video/mp4");
header("Cache-Control: max-age=2592000, public");
header("Expires: ".gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s', time()+2592000) . ' GMT');
header("Last-Modified: ".gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s', @filemtime($this->path)) . ' GMT' );
$this->start = 0;
$this->size = filesize($this->path);
$this->end = $this->size - 1;
header("Accept-Ranges: 0-".$this->end);
if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE'])) {
$c_start = $this->start;
$c_end = $this->end;
list(, $range) = explode('=', $_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE'], 2);
if (strpos($range, ',') !== false) {
header('HTTP/1.1 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable');
header("Content-Range: bytes $this->start-$this->end/$this->size");
exit;
}
if ($range == '-') {
$c_start = $this->size - substr($range, 1);
}else{
$range = explode('-', $range);
$c_start = $range[0];
$c_end = (isset($range[1]) && is_numeric($range[1])) ? $range[1] : $c_end;
}
$c_end = ($c_end > $this->end) ? $this->end : $c_end;
if ($c_start > $c_end || $c_start > $this->size - 1 || $c_end >= $this->size) {
header('HTTP/1.1 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable');
header("Content-Range: bytes $this->start-$this->end/$this->size");
exit;
}
$this->start = $c_start;
$this->end = $c_end;
$length = $this->end - $this->start + 1;
fseek($this->stream, $this->start);
header('HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content');
header("Content-Length: ".$length);
header("Content-Range: bytes $this->start-$this->end/".$this->size);
}
else
{
header("Content-Length: ".$this->size);
}
}
/**
* close curretly opened stream
*/
private function end()
{
fclose($this->stream);
exit;
}
/**
* perform the streaming of calculated range
*/
private function stream()
{
$i = $this->start;
set_time_limit(0);
while(!feof($this->stream) && $i <= $this->end) {
$bytesToRead = $this->buffer;
if(($i+$bytesToRead) > $this->end) {
$bytesToRead = $this->end - $i + 1;
}
$data = fread($this->stream, $bytesToRead);
echo $data;
flush();
$i += $bytesToRead;
}
}
/**
* Start streaming video content
*/
function start()
{
$this->open();
$this->setHeader();
$this->stream();
$this->end();
}
}
To use this class, you will have to write simple code like as below:
$stream = new VideoStream($filePath);
$stream->start();
Take a look at the example from the manual page of fsockopen()
:
$fp = fsockopen("www.example.com", 80, $errno, $errstr, 30);
if (!$fp) {
echo "$errstr ($errno)<br />\n";
} else {
$out = "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n";
$out .= "Host: www.example.com\r\n";
$out .= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";
fwrite($fp, $out);
while (!feof($fp)) {
echo fgets($fp, 128);
}
fclose($fp);
}
This will connect to www.example.com
, send a request then get and echo the response in 128 byte chunks. You may want to make it more than 128 bytes.