Content-Disposition downloading wrong file

Question

I am trying to download a file. I am using IE11. I have tried several methods to do this. Currently I am trying to use the header with Content-Disposition method. I have tried to do this a few different ways according to other answers people have given. And it does download. But instead of downloading the file I point it to, it downloads the file it is written in. So if I tell it to download example.txt in my test.php file. It will only download test.php.

These are the methods I have tried:

This one is written in test.html:

<?php
$filename = "example.txt"
header('Content-Type: text/plain');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' . basename($filename) . '"');
?>

I've also tried making it a button:

<a href="download.php?file=example.txt">BUTTON</a>

Where download.php is:

<?php
$file = $_GET['file'];  
header('Content-type: audio/mpeg');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$file.'"');
?>

I tried this:

<?php
header('Content-Type: application/download');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="example.txt"');
header("Content-Length: " . filesize("example.txt"));

$fp = fopen("example.txt", "r");
fpassthru($fp);
fclose($fp);
?>

And this:

header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"" . basename($File) . "\"");
header("Content-Type: application/force-download");
header("Content-Length: " . filesize($File));
header("Connection: close");

There are many more slight variations and mix and matching that I have tried. All have the same problem that the .html or .php file downloads rather than example.txt. Does anyone know why this would happen? Is something not supported in IE11? I do not think it is a syntax error simply because most of these I copied from other answers online. I have tried with example.txt existing and not existing, in this folder and other folders.

EDIT: So it turns out that these all work, I was just using them wrong. I had been trying to make isolated files to run this code so I could test it without interference from the rest of the functions on my website, but this left the php files without the resources they needed to actually run properly. When I put the code into the actual files on the website it worked perfectly. smh

Answer 1

Try this :

 header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
 header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
 header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($File));
 header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=' . basename($File));
 readfile($File);
 exit;