send a file then redirect to another page

rubyonrails-talk
1

I'm editing a controller action that previously used "send_file" to send a file and then just returned, like

send_file(some_params) and return

Now, though, the downloading has been moved into a different controller action, and i need to get back to the 'show' page after the user starts downloading the file. After doing the send_file, i tried to render the show action, but this makes the controller think that the show page url is the file i'm trying to send: i get an error message like "The file <show page url here> could not be located...".

Can anyone tell me if/how i can send the file and then redirect_to/render another view page?

thanks max

2

Max Williams wrote:

I'm editing a controller action that previously used "send_file" to send a file and then just returned, like

send_file(some_params) and return

Now, though, the downloading has been moved into a different controller action, and i need to get back to the 'show' page after the user starts downloading the file. After doing the send_file, i tried to render the show action, but this makes the controller think that the show page url is the file i'm trying to send: i get an error message like "The file <show page url here> could not be located...".

You can't. The browser has made an http request and you get to provide one response, either you render a template/send a file (those two are basically the same thing: a 200 response containing some data) or you redirect (a 30x response telling the browser where to go). You can't do both.

Fred