Show a PDF files in users browser via PHP/Perl

I assume you want the PDF to display in the browser, rather than forcing a download. If that is the case, try setting the Content-Disposition header with a value of inline.

Also remember that this will also be affected by browser settings - some browsers may be configured to always download PDF files or open them in a different application (e.g. Adobe Reader)


    $url ="https://yourFile.pdf";
    $content = file_get_contents($url);

    header('Content-Type: application/pdf');
    header('Content-Length: ' . strlen($content));
    header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename="YourFileName.pdf"');
    header('Cache-Control: private, max-age=0, must-revalidate');
    header('Pragma: public');
    ini_set('zlib.output_compression','0');

    die($content);

Tested and works fine. If you want the file to download instead, replace

    Content-Disposition: inline

with

    Content-Disposition: attachment

You could modify a PDF renderer such as xpdf or evince to render into a graphics image on your server, and then deliver the image to the user. This is how Google's quick view of PDF files works, they render it locally, then deliver images to the user. No downloaded PDF file, and the source is pretty well obscured. :)