File Download stops Browsing

programming
1

I’ve written a download script to act as a proxy for files on my website so people can’t get a direct link. The script works perfect, except that when you try to continue browsing after the file download has started, you can’t!

A direct link to the file causes no such problem, you can continue to browse through the site, but when downloading through the download.php file, you can’t - it just times out.

Here’s my script:


<?php
    # Declare function
    function send_download($filename,$phone_model){
        $file_path = "software/$phone_model/$filename";
        $filetype = strrchr($filename,'.');
        $ext = strtolower($filetype);
        $ext = str_replace(".", "", $ext);
        switch($ext) {
            case "zip":
            $ext = 'application/zip';
            break;
            case "exe":
            $ext = 'application/octet-stream';
            break;
            case "dmg":
            $ext = 'application/x-apple-diskimage';
            break;
        }
        
        $file_size = filesize($file_path);

// I even tried to limit the d/l rate which didn't help
        $download_rate = 1.5;

        header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
        header("Content-Type: $ext");
        header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=$filename");
        header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
        header("Content-Length: $file_size");
        //readfile($file_path);
        $file = @fopen($file_path,"rb");
        if ($file) {
            while(!feof($file)) {
                set_time_limit(0);
                print fread($file, round($download_rate * 1024));
                flush();
                sleep(1);
                if (connection_status()!=0) {
                    @fclose($file);
                    die();
                }
            }
            @fclose($file);
        }
    } 
    if (isset($_GET['file'])){
        $file = $_GET['file'];
        $member_query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM members WHERE email_address = '$memberID'") or die (mysql_error());
        while ($r = mysql_fetch_array($member_query)) {
            $phone_model = $r["phone_model"];
        }
    
        if (file_exists("software/$phone_model/$file")) {
            send_download($file, $phone_model);
        } else {
            echo "You Are Not Allowed to Download This Content";
        }
    } else {
        echo "Error";
    }
?>

This page opens in a blank window and sends the file. Can anyone see why it would slow down/stop the browsing in the parent window? Please help! This is not a browser specific bug either - tested in IE, Firefox, Chrome and Mac based Safari - all with the same results.