How to download large files through PHP script [duplicate]

Question

Using PHP, I am trying to serve large files (up to possibly 200MB) which aren't in a web accessible directory due to authorization issues. Currently, I use a readfile() call along with some headers to serve the file, but it seems that PHP is loading it into memory before sending it. I intend to deploy on a shared hosting server, which won't allow me to use much memory or add my own Apache modules such as X-Sendfile.

I can't let my files be in a web accessible directory for security reasons. Does anybody know a method that is less memory intensive which I could deploy on a shared hosting server?

EDIT:

if(/* My authorization here */) {         $path = "/uploads/";         $name = $row[0];           //This is a MySQL reference with the filename         $fullname = $path . $name; //Create filename         $fd = fopen($fullname, "rb");         if ($fd) {             $fsize = filesize($fullname);             $path_parts = pathinfo($fullname);             $ext = strtolower($path_parts["extension"]);             switch ($ext) {                 case "pdf":                 header("Content-type: application/pdf");                 break;                 case "zip":                 header("Content-type: application/zip");                 break;                 default:                 header("Content-type: application/octet-stream");                 break;             }             header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$path_parts["basename"]."\"");             header("Content-length: $fsize");             header("Cache-control: private"); //use this to open files directly             while(!feof($fd)) {                 $buffer = fread($fd, 1*(1024*1024));                 echo $buffer;                 ob_flush();                 flush();    //These two flush commands seem to have helped with performance             }         }         else {             echo "Error opening file";         }         fclose($fd); 

Answer 1

If you use fopen and fread instead of readfile, that should solve your problem.

There's a solution in the PHP's readfile documentation showing how to use fread to do what you want.