php post file using file_get_contents does not work for some file types

Question

The following code works fine, however if I change the files to use myFile.pdf or myFile.xlsx the file gets created with 0 bytes. only thing that changes for the working version and the non working version is the file type. Why am I getting 0 bytes with excel files and pdfs?

 $file = file_get_contents('myFile.xml');


 $url = 'destination.php';


 $post_data = array(
     "file" => $file,
     "fileName" => "myFile.xml"
 );

$stream_options = array(
'http' => array(
   'method'  => 'POST',
   'header'  => 'Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
   'content' => http_build_query($post_data),
),
 );

 $context  = stream_context_create($stream_options);
 $response = file_get_contents($url, null, $context);


 echo $response;

then my destination file saves the file like this:

 file_put_contents($_POST["fileName"], $_POST["file"]);

?>

Answer 1

In My instance the problem was actually with file size restrictions on the server and the file types were just coincidental. check post_max_size and upload_max_filesize.