Download Movie through link

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

I am storing movie data into db. Now I want to access movie from db and create a link to allow download movie.

But when I click on the link It simply open the movie player and does not play the movie. player give error in movie file.

When I try to save_as link and save the movie file and play It work's fine.

My code like:

=============== Controller def download       @movie = Movies.find(params[:file])       @headers["Content-Type"] = "video/x-ms-wmv; charset=utf-8"       render :text => @movie.file end

=============== View

<%= link_to movie.filename, {:action => 'download', :id => movie.filename, :file => movie.id }%>

2

if i understand correctly you can click that link, choose the option 'save as', download it to you hd and watch it. but you if you click the link and choose 'open', your video player opens but doesn't show any content. correct?

if so i don't think it's a problem with your rails app, but with your operating system. because as i understand it, the file gets send correctly. maybe try another video-player. are you able to open other videos on the net (maybe upload one to a ftp and open it with your browser)?

3

alright, then let's take a look at your code... how does it work? do you store your files in a folder inside your public-directory and filename points to that location? or do you store your files inside your database? what exactly is Movie.file and Movie.filename?

the following line throws me off (don't understand it):   render :text => @movie.file

what could help is a look at send_file: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Streaming.html#M000401

or even the improvement x_send_file:   http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoSendFilesFast

4

I believe that the usual thing when sending files is to use the webserver's filestreaming rather than rendering the file as text.

Try something like

send_file @movie.file_path, :disposition => :attachment

The disposition attachment option is actually set by default, but it will provide the behavior you want of downloading, instead of trying to open in the browser