find and open a pdf file

kat35601 · November 19, 2015, 7:42pm

I have some 200 pdf files in a folder that I want to be able to open from a web browser I have the first part and it works letting me look for a pdf file in a folder but how to I tell it to open a pdf file.

[php]

open pdf

Frame Lookup

----- <?php $file_dir=$_Post['file_dir']; foreach(glob("./pdf/*.pdf") as $filename){ $filename = basename($filename); echo "".$filename.""; }

?>

">

[/php]

ErnieAlex · November 20, 2015, 12:47am

Do you want to open it in a second tab?
Do you want to open it in a separate window?
Do you want to download it and allow the browser to open in in Acrobat Reader?
Or, lastly, do you want to open it into a frame on your browser with other controls available?

All are possible, but, each much be handled differently. Quite often, this would be handled by creating a
list of just LINKS for each PDF file found. You can change your to be an unordered list instead
and make each list item (

) an anchor that points to the actual file on your server. Then, you can
use CSS to make a drop-down for the

Did that make sense? But, again, depends on how you want the opened file to be handled…

kat35601 · November 20, 2015, 1:52pm

I would like to open it in a separate window.

ErnieAlex · November 20, 2015, 3:04pm

Well, first, PHP is SERVER-SIDE only. It runs on the server, not in the browser. Therefore, if you want to let
the user open the PDF, you need to use a CLIENT-SIDE program code to execute it. You can do that with
either Javascript, JQuery or HTML. NOT with PHP. It can be done with PHP by setting up a Javascript to run
ONLOAD when the page is loaded into the browser, but, that gets tricky and does not always work as it really
should.

One easy way to handle this using your select clause code is to set up a JS or in this example a JQuery code
function to pop out your extra page whenever the drop-down’s option is selected. Here is a sampler of how
it would work. You should place the JQ code at the bottom of the page so it is after the select is totally
populated. For some reason that seems to work better on some systems and certain browsers…
Also, to allow the secondary page, you need to place the full URL for the PDF file. So, you have to
alter your option to fit it in. Something like:
[php] echo “”.$filename."";[/php]
Then, the JQuery would be something like:
[php]

[/php]
Remember, if the URL is not set up as a valid one, it will cause odd errors. If the PDF is to be displayed in
a new window, it is just as if you typed that URL in. Should work for you! Good luck!