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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-14T23:58:37+00:00

Linking to external file in Ruby on Rails I have a file I want

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Linking to external file in Ruby on Rails

I have a file I want to share as a link in my rails app.
I create a link to it in the .erb file like this

<li><a href="somefile.pdf">Some File</a> </li>

When I select the link I get the following error.

Routing Error

No route matches “/pages/somefile.pdf”
with {:method=>:get}

Do I really need a route for this? I really just want the save as dialog to popup. Just a link to a file that the user can open or download.

What is the rails way to do this (rails newbie here)?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You should place the file in the app’s public/ directory and use a forward slash at the start of the path in your link’s href.

    The problem you are having is because href="somefile.pdf" is relative to the current URL which is probably something like http://localhost:3000/pages/42. By using href="/somefile.pdf" instead the resolved URL will be http://localhost:3000/somefile.pdf (rather than http://localhost:3000/pages/somefile.pdf) and it won’t conflict with your pages routes.

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