I''m building a rails app that will create .xml documents for the users of a particular intranet. My question is two fold 1. The files are in /public/files/something.xml, etc... How can I create a link_to in rails to access these files? 2. How I can I force the file to be downloaded (bring up a save dialog) as opposed to displaying in the browser? Thanks for hte help. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
downloading files wrote:> I''m building a rails app that will create .xml documents for the users > of a particular intranet. > > My question is two fold > 1. The files are in /public/files/something.xml, etc... > How can I create a link_to in rails to access these files?Yes. The /public directory is the webroot of your app... in other words that''s where all publicly accessible files should go. Since /public is the root, your url would be "http://yourhost.com/files/something.xml" or just "/files/something.xml".> 2. How I can I force the file to be downloaded (bring up a save dialog) > as opposed to displaying in the browser?Have a look at the "Content-Disposition" header... I think you set it to "attachment" to force the save dialog. I haven''t had occasion to use it, so I can''t tell you much more than that. I''m also not sure how you go about telling your webserver to set that header when it serves a static file. Maybe someone else around here knows. b
I tried going to: http://localhost:3000/files/test.xml and that gives a routing error. as far as setting the "Content-Dispotion" I don''t know how to do that. ANyone know? -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
If it gives you an error, that means that there is no such file as <your-rails-app>/public/files/test.xml -- Kent --- http://www.datanoise.com On 2/19/06, downloading files <justinjohnson@system7designs.com> wrote:> I tried going to: > > http://localhost:3000/files/test.xml > > and that gives a routing error. > > as far as setting the "Content-Dispotion" I don''t know how to do that. > ANyone know? > > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >
i tried it with a file that does exist and it works. now how can i use a <%=link_to %> to link to /files/filename? -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
You should use link_to helper method only to create a link to a controller action, for anything else you better use direct html ahref. -- Kent --- http://www.datanoise.com On 2/19/06, downloading files <justinjohnson@system7designs.com> wrote:> i tried it with a file that does exist and it works. now how can i use a > > <%=link_to %> to link to /files/filename? > > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >
On Monday 20 Feb 2006 02:41, downloading files wrote:> I tried going to: > http://localhost:3000/files/test.xml > and that gives a routing error.You''ll need to fix that first - perhaps drop off the ".xml", and go to just: http://localhost:3000/files/test ... assuming your controller is called "files" and the action is "test".> as far as setting the "Content-Dispotion" I don''t know how to do that. > ANyone know?I use something like this to export xml as a download from my database: def exportxml headers[''Content-Type''] = "application/xml" headers[''Pragma''] = "no-cache" headers[''Cache-Control''] = "no-cache, must-revalidate" headers[''Expires''] = "0" filename = Time.now.strftime("my_xml_download_%Y%m%d_%H%M.xml") headers[''Content-Disposition''] = "attachment; filename=" + filename @thedata_to_export = Yourmodel.find(:all) end Assuming you want to export a bunch of xml from your model, although it looks like you possibly just want to download ready-existing xml files from your public directory, in which case you don''t really need the above... heh, oh well! OK, now I''ve re-read your email (d''oh) - you have existing xml files to download, and you''ve put them in public/files and you simply want to force them to download, rather than display in the browser. Not sure how to do this with WEBrick or Lighttpd, but with Apache, there''s quite a cheap and dirty method you could use, if you really want to force download rather than display in the browser (assuming the browser accepts and displays XML, which most do). Make a file called ".htaccess" (that''s "dot htaccess") in your files directory, and in it put the following line: ForceType application/octet-stream I''ve never tried this exact line myself (though have used this directive for other purposes), but I can''t see why it wouldn''t work. Any file placed in that directory will use the (generic binary, so very unspecific) mime type octet-stream, which always results in a download. This will get you what you want, but is a bit of a brutal approach. There''s probably much nicer ways to achieve this with Rails (using the correct mimetype and still giving the download), but you''d have to make a controller that deals with the files to download, and in that you''d have to set the content-disposition (as above) to have the files attached. Perhaps this page will help you (at least with opening the file... http://pleac.sourceforge.net/pleac_ruby/fileaccess.html ... and then all you''d have to do is spit it out again as your data, as an attachment from the controller action. Shouldn''t be too hard. ;-) Sorry this is a bit of a ramble, I''m hoping somewhere in there is a solution for you, though it''s late and I have too much to do, so... back to the grindstone for me! Cheers, ~Dave -- Dave Silvester Rent-A-Monkey Website Development http://www.rentamonkey.com/ PGP Key: http://www.rentamonkey.com/pgpkey.asc
Best I can make out from the subject line of your message, this may be what you''re looking for: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Streaming.html#M000044 If not, try to articulate your problem in a little more detail. Best regards, Bill ----- Original Message ----- From: "downloading files" <justinjohnson@system7designs.com> To: <rails@lists.rubyonrails.org> Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2006 8:41 PM Subject: [Rails] Re: Downloading Files> I tried going to: > > http://localhost:3000/files/test.xml > > and that gives a routing error. > > as far as setting the "Content-Dispotion" I don''t know how to do that. > ANyone know? > > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
Bill Walton wrote:
> Best I can make out from the subject line of your message, this may be
what
> you''re looking for:
>
> http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Streaming.html#M000044
>
> If not, try to articulate your problem in a little more detail.
>
> Best regards,
> Bill
Right. So, looking at the rdoc Bill mentioned, it seems that one way to send the
xml files
and make sure they trigger the save dialog instead of being rendered in the
browser is to
have an action like this in your controller:
def download_file
file = "files\\" + @params[:file]
# BE SURE TO CHECK THE PARAM FOR HANKY-PANKY!
send_file(file)
end
And a link_to in your view like this:
<%= link_to "Download xml file", {:action =>
"download_file", :file => "test.xml"} %>
That puts ?file=test.xml on the end of the link url and the download_file method
gets that
param and looks for a file in the files dir. Be sure to check what was submitted
because
anyone could start playing around with that param and see what they can
download. Or you
could just hardcode the filename in the controller if you don''t have a
lot different files
to download.
From a little investigating, it appears that the working directory of rails is
the
project root, not the /public dir. So, I put my "files" folder in my
project root and this
works. If you just want the files to be publicly accessible, you can still put
the files
in /public. But then you''d need to configure the server to set the
Content-Disposition
header... or change your path in your action to "public\\files\\".
hope that helps,
b
PS: the "\\" is cuz I''m on windows... there''s
probably a "system file separator" property
in Ruby...
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "downloading files"
<justinjohnson@system7designs.com>
> To: <rails@lists.rubyonrails.org>
> Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2006 8:41 PM
> Subject: [Rails] Re: Downloading Files
>
>
>
>>I tried going to:
>>
>>http://localhost:3000/files/test.xml
>>
>>and that gives a routing error.
>>
>>as far as setting the "Content-Dispotion" I don''t
know how to do that.
>>ANyone know?
>>
>>--
>>Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>>_______________________________________________
>>Rails mailing list
>>Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
>>http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails