Send_file example code -- permissions?

jeffpritchard · October 28, 2008, 6:09pm

Hi,
I’m having trouble getting send_file to work. I’m building a relatively
small csv file, and trying to let the user download it.

My action to do the download looks like this:

def send_the_file
@temp_download_file_path = session[:temp_file_path]
send_file @temp_download_file_path,
:x_sendfile => true,
:type => ‘text/csv’,
:filename => “contacts.csv”
end

No errors are generated. Log says it is sending it. I wind up with an
empty ( 1
byte) file on the other end. I get the same results with and without
the “x_sendfile”.

Any advice on where the file should reside on my server and how to set
the necessary permissions to allow send_file to get at it? What else
could I be doing wrong?

Thanks for any additional help you guys can provide.

jp

jeffpritchard · October 31, 2008, 2:49am

Shameless bump. I still really could use some help on this guys! There
must be somebody out there who has used this.

thanks much,
jp

jeffpritchard · October 31, 2008, 10:54am

On Oct 31, 1:49 am, Jeff P. [email protected]
wrote:

Shameless bump. I still really could use some help on this guys! There
must be somebody out there who has used this.

What’s in the one byte?

send_file reads the file (in ruby) and spits the bytes out - the file
doesn’t have to be anywhere in particular, but it does need to be
readable by your rails process. Have you tried sticking a breakpoint
in there and see if you can open/read the file ? (I’d forget about
x_sendfile for now)

Fred

jeffpritchard · November 1, 2008, 3:52am

Here’s some example code that covers nginx, apache, or plain old
send_file:

github.com

kete/kete/blob/master/app/controllers/private_files_controller.rb

class PrivateFilesController < ApplicationController
  class UnknownTypeError < StandardError
  end

  class PermissionDeniedError < StandardError
  end

  def show
    # Only respond to known types to avoid code injection attacks
    raise UnknownTypeError unless %w(documents image_files audio video).member?(params[:type])

    # Ensure we load the correct object type
    type = params[:type] == 'audio' ? 'audio_recordings' : params[:type]

    # Instantiate an object instance based on the request parameters
    id = (params[:a] + params[:b] + params[:c]).to_i
    @record = eval(type.classify.to_s).find(id)

    # images are a special case. We have to fetch
    # the still image from the image file to check

This file has been truncated. show original

Works with 2.1, haven’t tried it with 2.2 RC1 yet.

Hope it helps.

Cheers,
Walter

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 2:49 PM, Jeff P. <

jeffpritchard · November 1, 2008, 11:41pm

Walter, this worked great. Thanks a million!

jp

Walter McGinnis wrote:

Here’s some example code that covers nginx, apache, or plain old
send_file:
kete/app/controllers/private_files_controller.rb at master · kete/kete · GitHub

Works with 2.1, haven’t tried it with 2.2 RC1 yet.

Hope it helps.

Cheers,
Walter

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 2:49 PM, Jeff P. <

jeffpritchard · November 2, 2008, 7:41am

Glad I could help. James Stradling was the guy that actually wrote
that particular bit of code.

On Nov 2, 2008, at 11:41 AM, Jeff P.
<[email protected]