How to Display PDFs in Browsers with Click Tracking and Location Concealment Using PHP or Perl?

Displaying PDF Files in Users' Browsers Using PHP or Perl

Problem: Users require the ability to view PDF files within their browsers, with the additional functionality of tracking clicks and concealing the PDF's actual location.

Solution:

Both PHP and Perl offer methods to render PDF files directly in a browser. Here are the basic steps involved:

PHP:

<code class="php">header('Content-type: application/pdf');
readfile('the.pdf');</code>

Perl:

<code class="perl">open(PDF, "the.pdf") or die "could not open PDF [$!]";
binmode PDF;
my $output = do { local $/; <PDF> };
close (PDF);

print "Content-Type: application/pdf\n";
print "Content-Length: " .length($output) . "\n\n";
print $output</code>

Additional Considerations:

• To embed the PDF within the page, set the Content-Disposition header to inline; filename="the.pdf".
• Ensure that users have the necessary PDF reader plugin installed (e.g., Adobe Reader).
• To disable the loading progress bar, disable the Accept-Ranges: bytes header.

Example Code:

PHP (complete):

<code class="php">$file = './path/to/the.pdf';
$filename = 'Custom file name for the.pdf';

header('Content-type: application/pdf');
header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename="' . $filename . '"');
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
header('Accept-Ranges: bytes');

readfile($file);</code>

Perl (complete):

<code class="perl">use strict;
use warnings;

my $file = 'the.pdf';
my $filename = 'Custom file name for the.pdf';

open(PDF, "<$file>") or die "Could not open PDF: $!";
binmode PDF;

my $size = -s PDF;

print "Content-type: application/pdf\n";
print "Content-Disposition: inline; filename=\"$filename\"\n";
print "Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary\n";
print "Content-Length: $size\n\n";

print while <PDF>;</code>

Note: Browser settings may override these techniques and force the PDF to download or open in an external application.

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