Question

In my app I have a module named “client”. I wish to create a sub directory “statements” and below that “accounts” then “account_123” and within this directory the pdfs representing statements for clint 123.
Structure client then statements then accounts then acount_XXX and the pdf files.

The problem

<a href=What_is_the_url_for">statement_1.pdf</a>?

Being MVC I am making little progess.

I moved the structure to public and it almost wotk except I could not retrieve dynamically the hostname i.r. http://www.hostnam.com/client/statement….

I know this is a security issue so I have moved the directory back yo below the client module.

Any help will be appreciayed.

TIA Ephraim

Answer 1

As far as I know you can’t place a direct link to a file placed under ‘application’ director (because of security issues as you already wrote), so one of possible solution is to make an action which read the content of a file and return it in a response object.

When user click a link to this action user get a window to open/save provided file.

Example:

public function exampleAction() {
    $this->_helper->layout->disableLayout();
    $this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender(true);

    /* ... */

    $file = "FILENAME WITH_PATH";
    $response = $this->getResponse();
    $response->setHeader('Cache-Control', 'public', true);
    $response->setHeader('Content-Description', 'public', true);
    $response->setHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename=' . FILENAME, true);
    $response->setHeader('Content-Type', FILETYPE, true);
    $response->setHeader('Content-Transfer-Encoding', 'binary', true);
    $response->setHeader('Content-Length', filesize($file), true);                    
    $response->setBody(file_get_contents($file));
}

I put in above code some constants because its values depends on your application.