How can PHP be used to implement pseudo-streaming for video files?

To implement pseudo-streaming for video files using PHP, we can use the HTTP "Range" header to specify the byte range of the video file that needs to be streamed. This allows the video to start playing before the entire file is downloaded. We can then read the specified byte range from the video file and output it to the browser in chunks. 

$video_path = "path/to/video.mp4";

if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE'])) {
    $range = $_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE'];
    $range = str_replace('bytes=', '', $range);
    $range = explode('-', $range);
    $start = intval($range[0]);
    $end = isset($range[1]) && !empty($range[1]) ? intval($range[1]) : filesize($video_path) - 1;

    header('HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content');
    header('Content-Type: video/mp4');
    header('Content-Length: ' . ($end - $start + 1));
    header("Content-Range: bytes $start-$end/" . filesize($video_path));

    $fp = fopen($video_path, 'rb');
    fseek($fp, $start);

    while (!feof($fp) && ($p = ftell($fp)) <= $end) {
        echo fread($fp, min(1024, $end - $p + 1));
        flush();
    }

    fclose($fp);
} else {
    header('HTTP/1.1 200 OK');
    header('Content-Type: video/mp4');
    header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($video_path));

    readfile($video_path);
}

Keywords

PHP pseudo-streaming video files media server byte-range requests

Related Questions