What is a "download.php" file in OS 10?

[Gary S]

My son downloaded what he thought was an mp3 sound file
last night and it downloaded as "download.php".

We tried to get iTunes to play it but it wouldn't.

I tried changing the .php to .mp3 and it changed
the look of the file but iTunes still wouldn't open it.

Any ideas?

I thought maybe it might be compressed and that Stuffit
might open it but it wouldn't. I'm wondering if I need to change the
extension to .sit or something.

 

[pendragon]

Gary, Not sure if this helps, but...

In Web programming, PHP is a script language and interpreter that is freely available and used primarily on Linux Web servers. PHP, originally derived from Personal Home Page Tools, now stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, which the PHP FAQ describes as a "recursive acronym."

PHP is an alternative to Microsoft's Active Server Page (ASP) technology.  As with ASP, the PHP script is embedded within a Web page along with its HTML. Before the page is sent to a user that has requested it, the Web server calls PHP to interpret and perform the operations called for in the PHP script.

An HTML page that includes a PHP script is typically given a file name suffix of ".php" ".php3," or ".phtml". Like ASP, PHP can be thought of as "dynamic HTML pages," since content will vary based on the results of interpreting the script.

PHP is free and offered under an open source license.

Perhaps your son downloaded the page and not just the song.

Harv

[Spartacus]

There are serveral websites that use PHP scripts for their downloads.

It's a Mac-only problem. These scripts are supposed to redirect to the file you're trying to download.
And that's what the script does.
The only problem is, that on the Mac the file is not renamed. Hence, you have successfully downloaded a file but it's called download.php like the script is called (and won't open with anything but a text editor).

Usually it is .zip file. Hence, you should try to re-name it download.zip.
If that doesn't work, go to the page where the file came from. Usually, you should be able to find the file name and type somewhere.

[Gary S]

Thanks Harv and Spart. I'll try and see if changing it to a .zip will work.

[Bill]

Yeah Harv,thanks for making me think about picking up a new and improved webster.
Holy Cow!

[krissel]

Actually you don't have to rename it, just drop it on Stuffit Expander and it will unstuff to its own folder.

[Gary S]

Thanks.

I got it to open with Stuffit.