Are there any best practices for optimizing PHP scripts for downloading large files?

When downloading large files in PHP, it's important to optimize the script to handle the potentially heavy load efficiently. One way to do this is by using output buffering to prevent memory exhaustion and improve performance. Additionally, setting appropriate headers and using readfile() function can help streamline the download process. 

<?php
// Set appropriate headers
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="large_file.zip"');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
header('Pragma: public');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));

// Open the file for reading
$handle = fopen($file, 'rb');

// Output buffering to handle large files efficiently
while (!feof($handle)) {
    echo fread($handle, 8192);
    ob_flush();
    flush();
}

// Close the file handle
fclose($handle);
?>

Keywords

PHP optimization large files download performance

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