Question

I want to open up pdfs in browser with cakephp. I am saving the files within webroot/files folder. I know how to use media which is direct downloads. but how do I open pdfs in browser directly ?

Answer 1

As per the MediaView book page, simply set autoRender to false and set a view variable named download to false in your controller. Also make sure to specify the mimeType as most browsers will force downloads for unknown mime types.

Example:

function download () {
    $this->view = 'Media';
    $this->autoRender = false;  // Disable auto-render.
    $params = array(
        'download' => false, // Don't force download.
        'id' => 'example.docx',
        'name' => 'example',
        'extension' => 'docx',   
        'mimeType' => array('docx' => 'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document'),   // extends internal list of mimeTypes
        'path' => APP . 'files' . DS  
   );
   $this->set($params);
}