Cakephp 2.3.x Sending Files and forcing the download of a mp4 file

Question

I'm using cakephp 2.3.1

I want to force download a mp4 file per http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/controllers/request-response.html#cake-response-file

In my 'view' I have the following code which is correctly searching for the filename, and finding the file name, and displaying the download link:

<?php $filename = APP . 'webroot/files/' . $dance['Dance']['id'] . '.mp4'; 
if (file_exists($filename)) {
    echo $this->Html->link('DOWNLOAD', array('controller' => 'dances', 'action' => 'sendFile', $dance['Dance']['id'])); 
    } else {
    echo 'Coming soon: available April 16th';
    }
?>

When the user clicks on the link I want to force the download of the mp4 file. In my controller I have the following code that doesn't work:

public function sendFile($id) {
    $file = $this->Attachment->getFile($id); //Note: I do not understand the 'Attachment' and the 'getFile($id)'
    $this->response->file($file['webroot/files/'], array('download' => true, 'name' => 'Dance'));
    //Return reponse object to prevent controller from trying to render a view
    return $this->response;
}   

I don't understand 'Attachment' and the 'getFile()'

I'm getting the following error: Error: Call to a member function getFile() on a non-object

What am I doing wrong and is there any other documentation I can be looking at to understand this better?

Answer 1

The line you don't understand is simply part of the example - it assumes the application has a model called Attachment and that it has a method called getFile. Since you don't have an Attachment model (or at least it isn't visible to the controller) you get a "call to member function on a non-object" error. That's not important though: all you need to worry about is providing a full system path to this->response->file(). In your example, you can probably get that by changing that line to:

$this->response->file(WWW_ROOT.'files/'. $id .'.mp4', array('download' => true, 'name' => 'Dance'));

You can get rid of the $this->Attachment->getFile line as it is irrelevant in your case.

Let me know if that helped!

Answer 2

public function downloadfile($id= null) {        
  $this->response->file(APP.'webroot\files\syllabus'.DS.$id,array('download'=> true, 'name'=>'Syllubus'));
  return $this->response;     
}

<?php echo $this->Html->link('Syllabus', 
  array('controller' => 'coursesubjects',
    'action'=>'downloadfile',
    $courseSubject['CourseSubject']['subject_syllabus']));
?>