php - Download a file in Laravel using a URL to external resource

Question

I'm keeping all uploads on a custom, external drive. The files are being stored via custom API.

In Laravel 5.2, I can do this for a local file to download it:

return response()->download('path/to/file/image.jpg');

Unfortunately, when I pass a URL instead of a path, Laravel throws an error:

The file "https://my-cdn.com/files/image.jpg" does not exist

(the URL is a dummy of course).

Is there any way I can download the image.jpg file using Laravel's implementation or do I do this with plain PHP instead?

Answer 1

There's no magic, you should download external image using copy() function, then send it to user in the response:

$filename = 'temp-image.jpg';
$tempImage = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), $filename);
copy('https://my-cdn.com/files/image.jpg', $tempImage);

return response()->download($tempImage, $filename);