Symfony 1.4: Best way provide a file download without using a template/view

Question

Of cource some other people have discussed these problem on stackoverflow, but not all ansers works for me and often they do not provide a version of there symfony installation.

Topics I read:

• Send attachment/Download file from Symfony action
• How to download a file on clicking thefile path using PHP-Symfony?
• symfony: setHttpHeader() doesn't work, header() does

Thats the point for me to ask how you handle file downloads in symfony 1.4 (without using the view)? In all my use cases I need a template file to render the response. If I send the response due the controller there is the only possibility to send it without an php error (header already sent) with

controller:

/** @var $response sfWebResponse */
$response = $this->getResponse();
$response->clearHttpHeaders();
$response->setContentType($mimeType);
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename="' . basename($filePath) . '"');
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Description', 'File Transfer');
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Transfer-Encoding', 'binary');
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Length', filesize($filePath));
$response->setHttpHeader('Cache-Control', 'public, must-revalidate');
$response->setHttpHeader('Pragma', 'public');
$response->sendHttpHeaders();

readfile($filePath); die();

This works without an template file. But imho this is not so pretty coding.

The alternative way with the template:

controller:

 /** @var $response sfWebResponse */
$response = $this->getResponse();
$response->clearHttpHeaders();
$response->setContentType($mimeType);
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename="' . basename($filePath) . '"');
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Description', 'File Transfer');
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Transfer-Encoding', 'binary');
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Length', filesize($filePath));
$response->setHttpHeader('Cache-Control', 'public, must-revalidate');
$response->setHttpHeader('Pragma', 'public');
$response->setContent(file_get_contents($filePath));
$response->sendHttpHeaders();

return sfView::NONE;

view:

<?php echo $sf_response->getRawValue()->getContent(); ?>

Answer 1

My prefered solution

$filePath = $document->getAbsoluteFilePath();
$mimeType = mime_content_type($filePath);

/** @var $response sfWebResponse */
$response = $this->getResponse();
$response->clearHttpHeaders();
$response->setContentType($mimeType);
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename="' . basename($filePath) . '"');
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Description', 'File Transfer');
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Transfer-Encoding', 'binary');
$response->setHttpHeader('Content-Length', filesize($filePath));
$response->setHttpHeader('Cache-Control', 'public, must-revalidate');
// if https then always give a Pragma header like this  to overwrite the "pragma: no-cache" header which
// will hint IE8 from caching the file during download and leads to a download error!!!
$response->setHttpHeader('Pragma', 'public');
//$response->setContent(file_get_contents($filePath)); # will produce a memory limit exhausted error
$response->sendHttpHeaders();

ob_end_flush();
return $this->renderText(readfile($filePath));

No need of use a template file. Usage of the symfony standard behaviour. Important: The template file must present!