CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubyruby-on-rails-3mp3download
Thanks for all the fish
Thanks for all the fish

Reputation: 1701

Rails 3 - MP3 files in public folder

I added mp3 files to the /public folder and I found a bit issue.

In my view I added the links:

= link_to "Interview 1", "/interview_01.mp3"

When I see the link from the page, everything appears normal until I click on it. The browser hangs on for a minute or more, the tile changes to "undefined" and my Google Chrome freezes.

What's wrong with it? How can I make it so people can just download the file?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2041

Answers (1)

Dan Knox
Dan Knox

Reputation: 644

Edit: More context for my answer since someone down voted me

When you link to an mp3 file, most modern browsers will attempt to play that file directly in the browser. Your browser is likely freezing because whatever plugin your browser is using to begin playing the file is broken. My guess would be you are running windows and it is attempting to use a quicktime plugin or something along those lines.

If you don't want the browser to play the file and you actually want the file to begin downloading, you need to add a few extra headers to the HTTP response. The most important being:

Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="filenamehere.mp3"

My original answer provides instructions for accomplishing this. If this is not what you were hoping to achieve then you can disregard it.

If you want the file embedded directly into the page with the new HTML5 audio tag, you can follow the advice given in the comment to your question by @Alen.

Original answer:

You should try sending the file from a controller action using the #send_file controller helper method.

= link_to "Inteview 1", :controller => 'files', :action => 'send_file', :filename => 'interview_01.mp3'

Then

class FilesController

  def send_file
    file_path = "#{Rails.root}/public/#{params[:filename]}"
    send_file file_path, :filename => params[:filename], :disposition => 'attachment'
  end

end

Reference Rails Api: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/DataStreaming.html#method-i-send_file

The send_file method sets the HTTP headers correctly to tell the browser to download the file instead of attempting to render it.

Upvotes: 5

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