Zip files generated by PHP file

Question

I am needing to parse a series of php files to output .PDFs and .PNGs files before zipping them using zipArchive. What I would like to do is something like

$zip = new ZipArchive();
$zip->open($file, ZipArchive::OVERWRITE);

//If you access qr_gen.php on a browser it creates a QR PNG file.
$zip->addFile('qr_gen.php?criteria=1', 'alpha.png');
$zip->addFile('qr_gen.php?criteria=2', 'beta.png');
//If you access pdf_gen.php on a browser it creates a PDF file.
$zip->addFile('pdf_gen.php?criteria=A', 'instructions.pdf');

$zip->close();
header('Content-Type: application/zip');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="file.zip"');
readfile($file);
unlink($file);

This obviously does not work. How can I accomplish my goal?

Answer 1

The following line will not work as you provide and url as filename:

$zip->addFile('qr_gen.php?criteria=1', 'alpha.png');

Instead you'll have to download the pngs first and store them locally. Then add them to the zip archive. Like this:

file_put_contents('alpha.png', 
    file_get_contents('http://yourserver.com/qr_gen.php?criteria=1');

$zip->addFile('alpha.png');

You'll find more information at the documentation page of ZipArchive::addFile()

Answer 2

What you will need to do is to get the files locally first. This can be (trivially) achieved using file_get_contents if you have URL fopen mappers set up, or failing that, cURL calls.

This is a sample way to do it:

$zip = new ZipArchive();
$zip->open("zipfile.zip",ZipArchive::OVERWRITE);
$URLs = array(
   "alpha.png" => "http://my.url/qr_gen.php?criteria=1",
   "beta.png" => "http://my.url/qr_gen.php?criteria=2",
   "instructions.pdf" => "http://my.url/pdf_gen.php?criteria=A");
foreach ($URLs as $file => $URL) {
  $f = @file_get_contents($URL);
  if (empty($f)) throw new Exception("File not found: ".$URL);
  $zip->addFromString($file, $f);
}

Your zip is then available as $zip for further processing.

Answer 3

First of all, execute all files into browser and put that content (png.pdf) into one folder and then create zip of it by fetching one by one.

hope it helps