Downloading a large file using curl

I need to download remote file using curl.

Here's the sample code I have:

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$st = curl_exec($ch);
$fd = fopen($tmp_name, 'w');
fwrite($fd, $st);
fclose($fd);

curl_close($ch);

But it can't handle big files, because it reads to memory first.

Is it possible to stream the file directly to disk?

<?php
set_time_limit(0);
//This is the file where we save the    information
$fp = fopen (dirname(__FILE__) . '/localfile.tmp', 'w+');
//Here is the file we are downloading, replace spaces with %20
$ch = curl_init(str_replace(" ","%20",$url));
// make sure to set timeout to a high enough value
// if this is too low the download will be interrupted
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 600);
// write curl response to file
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
// get curl response
curl_exec($ch); 
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
?>

I use this handy function:

By downloading it with a 4094 byte step it will not full your memory

function download($file_source, $file_target) {
	$rh = fopen($file_source, 'rb');
	$wh = fopen($file_target, 'w+b');
	if (!$rh || !$wh) {
		return false;
	}

	while (!feof($rh)) {
		if (fwrite($wh, fread($rh, 4096)) === FALSE) {
			return false;
		}
		echo ' ';
		flush();
	}

	fclose($rh);
	fclose($wh);

	return true;
}

Usage:

     $result = download('http://url','path/local/file');

You can then check if everything is ok with:

     if (!$result)
         throw new Exception('Download error...');

Find below code if you want to download the contents of the specified URL also want to saves it to a file.

<?php
$ch = curl_init();
/**
* Set the URL of the page or file to download.
*/
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,'http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&topic=t&output=rss');

$fp = fopen('rss.xml', 'w+');
/**
* Ask cURL to write the contents to a file
*/
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);

curl_exec ($ch);

curl_close ($ch);
fclose($fp);
?>

If you want to downloads file from the FTP server you can use php FTP extension. Please find below code:

<?php
$SERVER_ADDRESS="";
$SERVER_USERNAME="";
$SERVER_PASSWORD="";
$conn_id = ftp_connect($SERVER_ADDRESS);

// login with username and password
$login_result = ftp_login($conn_id, $SERVER_USERNAME, $SERVER_PASSWORD);

$server_file="test.pdf" //FTP server file path 
$local_file = "new.pdf"; //Local server file path 
													
##----- DOWNLOAD $SERVER_FILE AND SAVE TO $LOCAL_FILE--------##
if (ftp_get($conn_id, $local_file, $server_file, FTP_BINARY)) {
	echo "Successfully written to $local_file\n";
} else {
	echo "There was a problem\n";
}

ftp_close($conn_id);
?>

when curl is used to download a large file then CURLOPT_TIMEOUT is the main option you have to set for.

CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER has to be true in case you are getting file like pdf/csv/image etc.

You may find the further detail over here(correct url) Curl Doc

From that page:

curl_setopt($request, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 300); //set timeout to 5 mins

curl_setopt($request, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // true to get the output as string otherwise false

You can use this function, which creates a tempfile in the filesystem and returns the path to the downloaded file if everything worked fine:

function getFileContents($url)
{
    // Workaround: Save temp file
    $img = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), 'pdf-');
    $img .= '.' . pathinfo($url, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);

    $fp = fopen($img, 'w+');

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);

    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);

    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    fclose($fp);

    return $result ? $img : false;
}