Ruby on Rails send_file doesn't work until i refresh the page?

Question

I am working on a Rails server which I can download my locally stored movies and anime etc from. This is kind of working but when I click the download link I have to refresh

Answer 1

Move the file to public folder
add only file name into link_to

<%= link_to "Downloadable File", "/"+filename, %>

Answer 2

Edited to reflect comment below. I would simple add a concern for handling downloads and then use

include Concerns::Downloads

to handle your download request. the routes.rb would look like this.

resources :movies do
member do
  post 'download'
end

and in the view

  <%= link_to 'Download', {:controller => 'movies', :action => 'download'}, {:method => :post } %></a>

Answer 3

Are you using turbolinks? Turbolinks apparently doesn't play nicely with send_file (https://github.com/rails/turbolinks/issues/182). Try adding "data: { no-turbolink: true }" (or "'data-no-turbolink'=>true") in the link_to helper, e.g.:

<%= link_to "Downloadable File", downloadable_file, data: { no-turbolink: true } %>

See also: Rails 4, asset pipeline causes user downloadable files to be downloaded twice, rails won't send_data as file, Ruby on Rails send_file, code in controller action running twice

Answer 4

Try setting the disposition to attachment in send_file:

class DownloadController < ApplicationController
  def index
    ...
    send_file( @path, :disposition => 'attachment' )
  end
end

The issue may be that your browser is trying to open the file itself - :disposition => 'attachment' prompts the browser to download the file, even if it thinks the file is something that it can open.