What is the purpose of using the meta refresh tag in PHP for initiating downloads?

When initiating downloads in PHP, using the meta refresh tag can be useful to automatically trigger the download process without requiring user interaction. This can be particularly helpful when you want to initiate a download after a certain event or action on a webpage. 

<?php
$file = 'path/to/file.ext';
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' . basename($file) . '"');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
header('Pragma: public');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
readfile($file);
exit;
?>

Keywords

meta refresh tag PHP initiating downloads file download content-disposition

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