send_file errors out with nil.update

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hey everyone,

I've got a basic setup via an apache2 server, virtualhost ect. At the moment I'm just trying to use the send_file function of rails (actionpack I believe?) but it continues to error out. Here is the breakdown:

#Controller#

class Misc < ApplicationController

def stuff    send_file("#{RAILS_ROOT}/downloads/test.txt") end

end

#View#

<% a = Misc.new %> <p><%= a.stuff %></p>

And this is the error I've been getting:

You have a nil object when you didn't expect it! The error occurred while evaluating nil.update

Extracted source (around line #3):

2: <% a = Misc.new %> 3: <p><%= a.stuff %></p>

Trace yields the following:

vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/streaming.rb:139:in `send_file_headers!' vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/streaming.rb:72:in `send_file' app/controllers/home_controller.rb:16:in `stuff' app/views/home/index.html.erb:3:in `_run_erb_47app47views47home47index46html46erb'

Any suggestions?

*one thing i will note, dunno if it matters, is that rails 2.3.5 wouldnt install - kept complaining about rack 1.0.0 runtime, so instead i installed all the packages and dependencies separately via apt-get install actionpack -v=2.3.4 ect ect, using 2.3.4 instead*

Thanks!

-Regards Mac

2

This looks a little weird - from inside the view you're trying to create a new instance of a controller ? This is probably failing because you haven't initialized the controller properly. Why not call send_file from the appropriate controller action ?

Fred

3

Frederick Cheung wrote:

4

Frederick Cheung wrote:

o_O worked without a hitch... why would this be? As you suggested I threw it back in HomeController (via script/generate controller home index) under def index and walaa!

Because that's just how it's supposed to work

But why can I not define a new class to separate objects in the same controller?

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to achieve. You probably could create a new controller, but you'd need to set it up so that it thought it was responding to the same http request etc (ie the work that rails does when a new request comes in). I'm still not sure what you'd achieve by that though.

Fred