streaming dynamic downloads?

[jeff emminger]

[SOLVED]

On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 10:23 PM, jeff emminger <jemminger at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a php app running through fastcgi, and there's a page where I
> stream out a file for the user to download:
>
>        $output = dynamically_generated_content();
>        header("Content-type: application/octet-stream");
>        header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=somefile.xml");
>        echo $output;
>
> This works fine in apache, but in nginx all I get is a zero-size file
> called 'somefile' (no extension)
>
> Is there a way to make this work?  The file is generated on the fly.
>
> Thanks,
> Jeff
>

Turned out to be a problem with the URL I was using.  I was pointing
to "/export?xml" (no trailing slash), and Nginx was redirecting to
"/export/" (with trailing slash) but dropping the querystring.  I
changed my link to point to "/export/?xml" and all is well.  The
zero-kb file download was a result of my script expecting the file
format in the querystring, and not finding the format it generated
nothing and sent back the empty file.