PHP generate file for download then redirect

Question

I have a PHP app that creates a CSV file which is forced to download using headers. Here's the relevant part of the code:

header('Content-Type: application/csv'); 
header("Content-length: " . filesize($NewFile)); 
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' . $FileName . '"'); 
echo $content;
exit(); 

What I'd like to do is redirect users to a new page after the file is built and the download prompt is sent. Just adding header("Location: /newpage") to the end didn't work, expectedly, so I'm not sure how to rig this up.

Answer 1

I don't think this can be done - although I am not 100% sure.

The common thing (e.g. in popular download sites) is the reverse: first you go to the after page and then the download starts.

So redirect your users to the final page that (among other things) says:

Your download should start automatically. If not click [a href="create_csv.php"]here[/a].

As about initiating the download (e.g. automatically calling create_csv.php) you have many options:

• HTML: [meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=http://site/create_csv.php"]
• Javascript: location.href = 'http://site/create_csv.php';
• iframe: [iframe src="create_csv.php"][/iframe]