Php Force to download a file : Sometimes we need to download file forcefully. Here in this tutorial we are going to explain how you can force browser to download the files.

Php Force to download a file

You can use below method to download a file in php as below –

$file = "http://testdomain.com/file.exe"; 
header("Content-Description: File Transfer"); 
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream"); 
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$file\""); 
readfile ($file); 

The above example will download the file from the specified location.

PHP convert string to number : We sometimes need to convert the string to integer. There are many ways to convert string to number. Here in this tutorial we are going to explain how you can convert a string to number forcefully using different methods. We will also explain how to convert string to float etc.

PHP convert string to number – Interger Example

If you have string like – “33.3” and you want to convert it to integer use the type cast as below –

$number = "33.3";
$int = (int)$number;

In this example $number variable contains the string with “33.3”. Double quotes makes it string so we have used type cast int to convert it to integer.

PHP convert string to Integer : inval() function Example-

You can also convert string to integer using the function intval. Here is an example of intval-

$number = "33.3";
$int = intval($number);

The above function takes the string and returns the integer.

Now let us have some example about the float conversion.

PHP convert string to float Method 1

You can also convert string to float using the type cast (double) as below –

$number = "33.3";
$int = (double)$number; // will give 33.3
or 
$int = (float)$number; // will give 33.3

The double type cast will convert the number in float.

PHP convert string to float Method 2 : floatval() Function Example

You can also convert string to float using the floatval() function as below –

$number = "33.3";
$int = floatval($number); // will give 33.3

The floatval() takes string and converts it to the float as above.

PHP Set HTTP header to UTF-8: Sometimes we need to set the HTTp header to UTF-8 in php. header() is used to set the HTTp header to UTF-8. The header() sends a raw HTTP header. In this tutorial we are going to explain how you can set the HTTP header to UTF-8 using PHP.

PHP Set HTTP header to UTF-8

Use the header() function and add the charset utf-8 as below –

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

Now call this before sending any output to the client. Add this at the starting of the page. There should be no blank space before it because it may cause error. You can check the headers already sent or not using the function headers_sent(). For the function headers_sent() you can refer – http://php.net/manual/en/function.headers-sent.php

Refresh page using PHP Function : Sometimes in php we need to reaload ie. refresh a page. There can be several ways to refresh a page in php we are going to explain few of them. In this tutorial we will explain how you can refresh a page after some interval of time.

Refresh page using PHP

You can use the header() function to refresh the page here is an example to refresh the page using this function-

$second = 10;
header("Refresh:$second");

This will refresh page after each 10 seconds.

Refresh page using PHP And Redirect to another page-

If you to redirect to another page after refreshing the page you can add the second parameter ie. page you want to redirect-

$second = 10;
header("Refresh:$second; url=testpage.php" );

This will refresh the page after the given time and redirect to the given page.

Refresh page in PHP using HTML META

You can also refresh a page using the HTML META as below-

echo("");

Refresh page in PHP using Javascript

You can also refresh a page using the javascript as below-

You can also use the javascript to refresh the page in php. The above example will reload the same page after refreshing.