Rails: ZIP file shown in browser instead of being downloaded - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

My controller sends a ZIP file:
def index
respond_to do |format|
format.html { render :text => open("tmp/test1.zip", "rb").read }
end
end
PROBLEM: the ZIP is received as text shown in the browser.
I would like it to come as a download.
Note: I wrote format.html because when I write format.zip I get uninitialized constant Mime::ZIP. That is probably part of the problem.

Answer 1

You can register your own mime type:
Mime::Type.register "application/zip", :zip
def index
respond_to do |format|
format.html { ... } #do whatever you need for html
format.csv { ... } #do whatever you need for csv
format.zip { send_file 'your_file.zip' }
end
end
have a look here:
http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2006/12/19/using-custom-mime-types

Answer 2

You should probably use ActionController::DataStreaming#send_file Take a look here:
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/DataStreaming.html#method-i-send_file

Answer 3

You can skip the respond_to stuff and manually set the content type:
def index
render :file => '/full/path/to/tmp/test1.zip', :content_type => 'application/zip', :status => :ok
end
See the Layouts and Rendering in Rails guide for more information.
If you want to support .csv as well, then you could try looking at the params[:format]:
def index
if params[:format] == 'zip'
# send back the zip as above.
elsif params[:format] == 'csv'
# send back the CSV
else
# ...
end
end
And have a look at send_file as Marian Theisen suggests.

Answer 4

a simple solution for the user to download a file located in the application
def index
send_data File.read('/full/path/to/tmp/test1.zip'), filename: "test1.zip"
end
send_data will read your file located here /full/path/to/tmp/test1.zip and then send it as a response as a file
and your user download a file with filename test1.zip