Rails 3: Sending tempfiles for download
When you create a temporary file (e.g. to store a generated Excel sheet) and try to send it to the browser from a controller, it won't work by default. Take this controller action:
Copyclass FoosController < ApplicationController def download file = Tempfile.new('foo') file.puts 'foo' file.close send_file file.path end end
Accessing this controller action will usually raise a 404 not found in the browser and the Apache log will say:
CopyThe given path was above the root path: xsendfile: unable to find file: /tmp/foo20110721-28050-1h104da-0
The reason for this is that Rails 3 uses X-Sendfile for file downloads and Apache is only allowed to transfer files from a whitelist of paths that should not include /tmp.
One solution for this is to save the tempfile in your project directory's tmp instead:
Copyfile = Tempfile.new('foo', 'tmp')
Note that depending on your setup, you might need to change that file's permissions so Apache can read it.
Does your version of Ruby on Rails still receive security updates?
Rails LTS provides security patches for old versions of Ruby on Rails (3.2 and 2.3).
