readfile() function read the zip file instead of Downloading it (Zend)

Question

I have to trigger a download of a zip file ( The Zip file is inside my data folder). For this i am using the code,

$file = 'D:\php7\htdocs\Project\trunk\api\data\file.zip';
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-type: application/zip');
header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename=' . basename($file) );
readfile($file);`

This is working in core php as i expected. But when i am using the same code in the Zend prints a content like below,

PKYsVJ)~�� study.xlsPKYsVJs�����+ tutorial-point-Export.xlsPKYsVJn��� 8��Zabc.xlsP

In between the content i can see the name of all files in the zip. But it is not getting downloaded.

After i realised that this is not working i started searching about it and Found some solution from stack over flow

Try 1: Adding different header element and ob functions in every random lines

• header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
• header('Expires: 0');
• header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
• header('Pragma: public');
• header('Content-Length: ' . $file_size);
• ob_start();
• ob_clean();
• flush();

All these are tried from different stack overflow Question and answers and have the same result

Try 2:PHP is reading file instead of downloading . This question do not have any accepted answer (He was asking about the core php but i have the same issue with zend only) . I tried all of this but it was not working.

Try 3:Changing the .htaccess . After that i thought it was a problem with my .htaccess and found this answer for changing the .htaccess file.

<FilesMatch "\.(?i:zip)$">
        ForceType application/octet-stream
        Header set Content-Disposition attachment
</FilesMatch>

This also given me the same result.

Try 4:Using download functions in Zend . I have tried the all the zend functions in the answer of this question. But given me an empty output even the file was not read.

Try 5: Remove all the unwanted spaces before and after the php tag as per the answer

Is there any other way to trigger a download in ZF2 framework?

EDIT

Below is my exact function. This is GET(API) function,

public function getList(){
    try{
       //here i am getting the zip file name.
       $exportFile = $this->getRequest()->getQuery('exportid','');
       $file = 'D:\php7\htdocs\Project\trunk\api\data\\' . $exportFile . '.zip';
       header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
       header('Content-type: application/zip');
       header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename=' . basename($file) );
       readfile($file);
       return new JsonModel(["status"=>"Success"]);
    } catch(\Exception $e){
       return new JsonModel(["status"=>"Failed"]);
    }
}

Answer 1

There are two problems here:

• your browser trying to open the file, instead of downloading it.
• also, it is not opening the file correctly.

Both point to a Content-Type error. Verify that the Content-Type being received by the browser is correct (instead of being rewritten as, say, text/html).

If it is, change it to application/x-download. This might not work in Internet Explorer, which performs some aggressive Content-Type sniffing. You might try adding a nosniff directive.

Additionally, after a readfile (and you might be forced to return the file's contents instead of readfile()'ing - i.e., return file_get_contents($filename);), you should stop all output with return null;. ZIP file directory is at the very end, so if you attach a JSON message there, you risk the browser neither downloading the file, nor displaying it correctly.

As a last resort, you can go nuclear and do everything yourself. Extremely non-elegant, and all frameworks ought to provide an alternative, but just in case...

// Stop *all* buffering
while (ob_get_level()) {
    ob_end_clean();
}
// Set headers using PHP functions instead of Response
header('Content-Type: application/x-download');
header('X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($filename));
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="whatever.zip"');
die(readfile($filename));

It's possible that some creative use of atexit handlers or destructor hooks might mess up even this last option, but I feel it's unlikely.