Controlling HTTP Response Header Lines in PHP Scripts

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This chapter provides tutorial examples and notes about HTTP response header line. Topics include understanding of HTTP response structure and standard header lines; controling header lines using the header() function; dumping HTTP responses to view header lines; IIS and PHP engine added header lines for static files and PHP scripts; Location, Content-Type, and Content-Disposition header lines.

What Is an HTTP Response?

HTTP Response Header Lines

header() - Inserting a Raw Header Lines

HttpRequestGet.php - Viewing Header Lines

Response Header Lines of Static Files

HttpHeaderLines.php - Examples of Inserting Header Lines

Location: - Forcing the Browser to Redirect to Another URL

Content-Type: - Generating Non-HTML Response Body

Content-Disposition: - Sending Files for Downloading

Conclusion:

• HTTP response header lines must be generated before any other outputs from the script, unless you have the output_buffering turned on.
• Setting header lines in PHP is simple - one built-in function, header(), does everything for you.
• "Location" is a interesting header line. It tells the browser to redirect itself to a new URL.
• "Content-disposition" tells the browser to prepare for downloading the entity body.
• I like the powerful function, readfile(), reading the content of a file and sending it to the HTTP response directly.