Chrome has "Failed to load PDF document" error message on inline PDFs

Question

I have a problem with reading pdf file in Chrome by using PHP.

The following code is how I do in PHP

$path = "actually file path";
header("Pragma: public");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Content-type: $content_type");
header('Cache-Control: private', FALSE);
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=\"$filename\"");
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Content-Length' . filesize($path));
ob_clean();
flush();
readfile($path);

In here, I set the Content-Disposition to inline. Because I want to display the pdf file if user browser have build-in pdf viewer plugin. As you may know, Chrome has build-in pdf viewer.

The problem is I have bunch of pdf files on the server. Only some of them can be viewed by Chrome. I can't figure out why others can not work the same way. I have checked the permission of each files. It looks like not the permission problem.

Is there anyone know what the problem is? Thank you.

Answer 1

I've been wrestling with this same issue. This is as close as I got to consistent results across browsers. I think that the reason you could be having problems is if some PDF's are too large for readfile() to handle correctly. Try this:

$file = "path_to_file";
$fp = fopen($file, "r") ;

header("Cache-Control: maxage=1");
header("Pragma: public");
header("Content-type: application/pdf");
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=".$myFileName."");
header("Content-Description: PHP Generated Data");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header('Content-Length:' . filesize($file));
ob_clean();
flush();
while (!feof($fp)) {
   $buff = fread($fp, 1024);
   print $buff;
}
exit;

Answer 2

I had similar issue but I noticed the order matters. Seems that ; filename= must have quotes around it, Content-Disposition: attachment Try this:

    $file = "/files/test.pdf";
    $finfo = finfo_open(FILEINFO_MIME_TYPE); // return mime type ala mimetype extension
    $mime = finfo_file($finfo, $file);

    header('Pragma: public');
    header('Expires: 0');
    header('Content-Type: $mime');
    header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
    header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.basename($file).'"'));
    header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
    header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
    header('Content-Length' . filesize($file));
    ob_clean();
    flush();
    readfile($file);

Answer 3

i've fixed this way

$path = 'path to PDF file';
header("Content-Length: " . filesize ( $path ) ); 
header("Content-type: application/pdf"); 
header("Content-disposition: inline; filename=".basename($path));
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
ob_clean();
flush();
readfile($path);