CODEWITHSUNDEEP
herokuruby-on-rails-4
Alain ANDRE
Alain ANDRE

Reputation: 305

Ruby, heroku: Get the URL of a temporary file (binary)

I'm having trouble getting the URL of a temp file I've created. The objective of my controller called with ajax is to generate a PDF in a temporary dir that is cleaned each time dynos start, then return JSON with the URL of the file. The JavaScript waiting for the JSON will then call window.location.href to download the PDF.

I've done all I think of, but it's not working. I've heard that Heroku has a temporary directory cleaned each time dynos are started (cf creating-temporary-files-in-heroku). But that post is 2 years old and is talking about RAILS_ROOT that does not exist anymore. So I'm using Rails.root.join('app', 'tmp')

Here is my controller function:

def print_a
  pdf = render_to_string :pdf => params[:name],
    :template => "prints/printA.pdf.html.erb",
    :layout => nil

  temp_dir = Rails.root.join('app','tmp')
  Dir.mkdir(temp_dir) unless Dir.exists?(temp_dir)
  @tempfile = Tempfile.new [params[:name], '.pdf'], temp_dir
  @tempurl = "#{request.protocol}#{request.host_with_port.sub(/:80$/,"")}/tmp/#{File.basename(@tempfile.path)}"
  File.open(@tempfile.path, 'wb') do |file|
      file << pdf
  end

  render "prints/printA.rabl"
end

The JSON is rendered via prints/printA.rabl:

node(:tempurl) { @tempurl }
node(:tempfile) { @tempfile.path }

I'm using tempfile to see if the dir is good. It gives:

/home/alain/Projects/Heroku/pj/app/tmp/_20131022-4464-alrmkb.pdf

The real value important for the JavaScript is tempurl:

http://0.0.0.0:5000/tmp/_20131022-4464-alrmkb.pdf

And if I visit this tempurl, I get this error:

No route matches [GET] "/tmp/_20131022-4464-alrmkb.pdf"

Can anyone help me get it to work? Thanks.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1169

Answers (1)

phoet
phoet

Reputation: 18835

you can't point to the tmp folder. simple as that.

what you can do is

a) put a tmp folder in your public folder, because public is served by the http server

b) stream the file through some controller action in your rails application

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions