Today’s featured PHP snippet is from Jonas John and it’s a simple and helpful solution for controlling a file’s download rate. This is very beneficial for those who have limited bandwidth.
The code is still a bit rough around the edges and could use a bit more polishing. Like for one, the execution time doesn’t count the time script, rather it only counts the actual time required by the command and the functions. But nonetheless, it’s still a good approach at limiting the download rate.
// local file that should be send to the client$local_file = 'test-file.zip';// filename that the user gets as default$download_file = 'your-download-name.zip';// set the download rate limit (=> 20,5 kb/s)$download_rate = 20.5;if(file_exists($local_file) && is_file($local_file)) { // send headers header('Cache-control: private'); header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream'); header('Content-Length: '.filesize($local_file)); header('Content-Disposition: filename='.$download_file); // flush content flush(); // open file stream $file = fopen($local_file, "r"); while (!feof($file)) { // send the current file part to the browser print fread($file, round($download_rate * 1024)); // flush the content to the browser flush(); // sleep one second sleep(1); } // close file stream fclose($file);}else { die('Error: The file '.$local_file.' does not exist!');}If you’re looking for a nice alternative, you can check out Artur Graniszewski’s approach to throttling down QoS bandwidth.
Image source: Hongkiat
