Laravel Download Remote file

I am using Laravel with Twilio. One of the features that Twilio offers is the ability to download recordings of conversations.

I thought to save the recording URL in the database for streaming purposes and then whenever someone wants to access the raw file of the recording I would allow them to download it at will and pass it through from Twilio just so that I don't have to store media that Twilio is already storing.

I am finding however that trying to download a file with Laravel by just passing through the remote URL is not possible. I am not trying to create a whole new storage driver like s3 or rackspace, the goal is just to take the full url path to the remote file, fetch it, and then immediately serve it when the download button is clicked.

I've tried to use the response()->download() method but that seems to only work with the local filesystem.

Does anybody know if this is possible?

via Chebli Mohamed