Question

I have an uploader which allows you to upload documents. What I want to do is trigger a download for the document when you view its show action. The url would be something like:

/documents/16

This document could be .txt, or .doc.

So far, my show action looks like this:

  def show
    @document = Document.find(params[:id])
    respond_with(@document) do |format|
      format.html do
        render layout: false, text: @document.name
      end
    end
  end

How would I go about achieving this?

Answer 1

Take a look at the send_data method:

Sends the given binary data to the browser. This method is similar to render :text => data, but also allows you to specify whether the browser should display the response as a file attachment (i.e. in a download dialog) or as inline data. You may also set the content type, the apparent file name, and other things.

So, I think in your case it should be something like this:

def show
  @document = Document.find(params[:id])
  send_data @document.file.read, filename: @document.name
end