Linking to a file (e.g. PDF) within a CakePHP view

Question

I'd like to link to some PDFs in one of my controller views. What's the best practice for accomplishing this? The CakePHP webroot folder contains a ./files/ subfolder, I am confounded by trying to link to it without using "magic" pathnames in my href (e.g. "/path/to/my/webroot/files/myfile.pdf").

What are my options?

EDIT: I didn't adequately describe my question. I was attempting to link to files in /app/webroot/files/ in a platform-agnostic (ie. no mod_rewrite) way.

I've since worked around this issue by storing such files outside the CakePHP directory structure.

Answer 1

$html->link('Pdf', '/files/myfile.pdf');

Answer 2

This is somewhat tangential, but for access to such a location in Models and other places you can simply do this:

$file = WWW_ROOT . DS . 'files' . DS;

This tactic might be helpful to someone accessing files for static data loading, such as XML or JSON.

This is not recommended for public consumption or public linking.

Answer 3

I can confirm that this is an issue when mod_rewrite is not being used.

<?php echo $html->link('pdf', '/files/test.pdf'); ?>

outputs

<a href="/pathtoapp/index.php/files/test.pdf">pdf</a>

it should output

<a href="/pathtoapp/app/webroot/files/test.pdf">pdf</a>