send_file(path, options = {}) — ActionController::Streaming

send_file(path, options = {})

Sends the file, by default streaming it 4096 bytes at a time. This way the whole file doesn’t need to be read into memory at once. This makes it feasible to send even large files. You can optionally turn off streaming and send the whole file at once.

Be careful to sanitize the path parameter if it is coming from a web page. send_file(params[:path]) allows a malicious user to download any file on your server.

Options:

:filename - suggests a filename for the browser to use. Defaults to File.basename(path).
:type - specifies an HTTP content type. Defaults to ‘application/octet-stream’. You can specify either a string or a symbol for a registered type register with Mime::Type.register, for example :json
:length - used to manually override the length (in bytes) of the content that is going to be sent to the client. Defaults to File.size(path).
:disposition - specifies whether the file will be shown inline or downloaded. Valid values are ‘inline’ and ‘attachment’ (default).
:stream - whether to send the file to the user agent as it is read (true) or to read the entire file before sending (false). Defaults to true.
:buffer_size - specifies size (in bytes) of the buffer used to stream the file. Defaults to 4096.
:status - specifies the status code to send with the response. Defaults to ‘200 OK’.
:url_based_filename - set to true if you want the browser guess the filename from the URL, which is necessary for i18n filenames on certain browsers (setting :filename overrides this option).
:x_sendfile - uses X-Sendfile to send the file when set to true. This is currently only available with Lighttpd/Apache2 and specific modules installed and activated. Since this uses the web server to send the file, this may lower memory consumption on your server and it will not block your application for further requests. See blog.lighttpd.net/articles/2006/07/02/x-sendfile and tn123.ath.cx/mod_xsendfile/ for details. Defaults to false.

The default Content-Type and Content-Disposition headers are set to download arbitrary binary files in as many browsers as possible. IE versions 4, 5, 5.5, and 6 are all known to have a variety of quirks (especially when downloading over SSL).

Simple download:

send_file '/path/to.zip'

Show a JPEG in the browser:

send_file '/path/to.jpeg', :type => 'image/jpeg', :disposition => 'inline'

Show a 404 page in the browser:

send_file '/path/to/404.html', :type => 'text/html; charset=utf-8', :status => 404

Read about the other Content-* HTTP headers if you’d like to provide the user with more information (such as Content-Description) in www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.11.

Also be aware that the document may be cached by proxies and browsers. The Pragma and Cache-Control headers declare how the file may be cached by intermediaries. They default to require clients to validate with the server before releasing cached responses. See www.mnot.net/cache_docs/ for an overview of web caching and www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.9 for the Cache-Control header spec.

Parameters

path req
options opt = {}

Source

# File actionpack/lib/action_controller/streaming.rb, line 79
      def send_file(path, options = {}) #:doc:
        raise MissingFile, "Cannot read file #{path}" unless File.file?(path) and File.readable?(path)

        options[:length]   ||= File.size(path)
        options[:filename] ||= File.basename(path) unless options[:url_based_filename]
        send_file_headers! options

        @performed_render = false

        if options[:x_sendfile]
          logger.info "Sending #{X_SENDFILE_HEADER} header #{path}" if logger
          head options[:status], X_SENDFILE_HEADER => path
        else
          if options[:stream]
            render :status => options[:status], :text => Proc.new { |response, output|
              logger.info "Streaming file #{path}" unless logger.nil?
              len = options[:buffer_size] || 4096
              File.open(path, 'rb') do |file|
                while buf = file.read(len)
                  output.write(buf)
                end
              end
            }
          else
            logger.info "Sending file #{path}" unless logger.nil?
            File.open(path, 'rb') { |file| render :status => options[:status], :text => file.read }
          end
        end
      end

Defined in actionpack/lib/action_controller/streaming.rb line 79 · View on GitHub · Improve this page · Find usages on GitHub

Defined in ActionController::Streaming

Signature

Parameters