Send_data with jpeg not working

Rails
1

I’m a newbie having trouble using send_data to send a jpeg file to the
browser for display in an html img tag. This is the relevant code
from my controller (photos_controller.rb):

def retrieve
@photo = Photo.find(params[:id])
send_data File.read(@photo.abs_img_path), :type => “image/
jpeg”, :disposition => “inline”
end

def download
@photo = Photo.find(params[:id])
send_file @photo.abs_img_path, :type => “image/jpeg”, :filename =>
@photo.filename
end

In my html.erb file I have the following tags:

<%= image_tag retrieve_photo_path(@photo) %>
…
<%= link_to “Download photo”, download_photo_path(@photo) %>

I get a broken image in the browser. I see the html src correctly has
the image tag . If I browse directly to
“应用宝官网-全网最新最热手机应用游戏下载”, I just get the text “http://
应用宝官网-全网最新最热手机应用游戏下载” spit back to the browser (I’m using
Firefox). The download link works perfectly, so I know the routes
work, the file exists and isn’t corrupted, etc.

What am I missing with that send_data method? I’m using InstantRails
on Win XP, updated to Rails 2.3.4, Ruby 1.8.6. I’ve been banging my
head on this for a little while and I have a feeling I’m missing
something obvious…

2

A little more info now… when I simulate the img tag request by
typing 应用宝官网-全网最新最热手机应用游戏下载 into the browser, I get the
following line in my Apache access.log:

“GET /photos/5/retrieve HTTP/1.1” 304 0

whereas if I type in the url to one of my public images (www.myapp.com/
images/logo.jpg), the logo image displays and I get the following line
in the Apache log:

“GET /images/logo.jpg HTTP/1.1” 200 30796

Clicking the download link (which is successful) produces a similar
access.log entry with status code 200. A cursory search on HTTP
status codes shows me 200 means OK and 304 means “Not Modified”. Does
this have something to do with caching – is Apache thinking it has
the requested data cached?

3

okay here’s the solution (graciously provided by someone on
stackoverflow.com) –

I modified the retrieve action in my controller to use File.open
first:

def retrieve
@photo = Photo.find(params[:id])
File.open(@photo.abs_img_path, ‘rb’) do |f|
send_data f.read, :type => “image/jpeg”, :disposition => “inline”
end
end