How to Download file from URL using PHP

July 9, 2021 admin

In this tutorial, we are going to see how to download file from URL using PHP. There are several approaches to download a file from a URL. Some of them are described below:

Using file_get_contents() function:

file_get_contents() function is used to read a file into a string. This feature uses memory mapping techniques supported by the server and thus improves performance, making it a preferred way to read the contents of a file.

<?php 
	$url = 'https://stackhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-stackhowto.png'; 
	  
	// Use the basename function to return the name of the file.
	$file_name = basename($url); 
	   
	/* Use file_get_contents() function to get the file from the url and 
	   use file_put_contents() function to save the file */
	if(file_put_contents( $file,file_get_contents($url))) { 
		echo "File downloaded successfully."; 
	} 
	else { 
		echo "File download failed."; 
	}
?>

Output:

File downloaded successfully.

Using PHP Curl:

<?php 
	$url = 'https://stackhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-stackhowto.png'; 
	  
	// Initialize the cURL session
	$session = curl_init($url); 
	  
	// Initialize the directory name where the file will be saved
	$dir = './'; 
	  
	$file_name = basename($url); 
	  
	// Save file
	$save = $dir . $file; 
	  
	// Open file
	$file = fopen($save, 'wb'); 
	  
	// defines the options for the transfer
	curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_FILE, $file); 
	curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); 
	  
	curl_exec($session); 
	  
	curl_close($session); 
	  
	fclose($file); 
?>