Set up link in SilverStripe navigation to automatically download a PDF file - pdf

Question

I have some code I'm working on for a PDF download page type in SilverStripe that allows people to upload a PDF file to the backend. In turn, this PDF file is then read into the top navigation as a link that, when clicked, automatically downloads the PDF file.
I have most of the code set up:
<?php
class PDFTemplate extends Page {
public static $db = array(
);
public static $has_one = array(
'PDFFile' => 'File'
);
public static $has_many = array(
);
public function Link() {
return '/home/download?ID=' . $this->ID;
}
public function getCMSFields() {
$fields = parent::getCMSFields();
$fields->addFieldToTab("Root.Main", new UploadField('PDFFile', "PDF File"), "Content");
return $fields;
}
}
class PDFTemplate_Controller extends Page_Controller {
public static $allowed_actions = array (
'download'
);
public function init() {
parent::init();
}
public function download() {
$id = $_GET['ID'];
$obj = DataObject::get_by_id('PDFTemplate', $id);
header('Content-Type: application/pdf');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;');
header('Pragma: no-cache');
return readfile("");
}
}
But the one thing I'm stuck on at the moment is how to get the url of the PDF file into the readfile() command. $obj right now is being set to get the id of the specific PDF file for the page....so do I need do use something like $obj.URL or $obj.Link in readfile()?

Answer 1

You're requesting a PDFTemplate object at the moment, not a File object so that's a problem - but you shouldn't need to pass an ID to this page to download it anyway because the Page already has that information.
If you don't need to hide the direct URL of the PDF in question, something like this might be a lot easier and offer better performance:
Delete the download() and Link() functions.
In the .ss template for your menu do: <a <% if $PDFFile %>href="$PDFFile.Link" target="_blank"<% else %>href="$Link"<% end_if %>>