Production gotcha: Rails send_file seems to corrupt files
Posted November 21, 2008 
Comments(0)
Comments(0) What’s wrong with the following Rails code?
class ResourceController < ApplicationController
DEFAULT_OPTIONS = { :disposition => ‘inline’ }
DEFAULT_OPTIONS = { :disposition => ‘inline’ }
def send_file1
send_file ‘flash1.swf’, DEFAULT_OPTIONS
end
def send_file2
send_file ‘flash2.swf’, DEFAULT_OPTIONS
end
end
This code works perfectly in development mode. In production mode retrieving the two different files the second file gets corrupt / wrong…
After a long search I looked in the rails code:
def send_file(path, options = {}) #:doc:
raise MissingFile, “Cannot read file #{path}” unless File.file?(path) and File.readable?(path)
options[:length] ||= File.size(path)
options[:filename] ||= File.basename(path) unless options[:url_based_filename]
send_file_headers! options
#….
end
raise MissingFile, “Cannot read file #{path}” unless File.file?(path) and File.readable?(path)
options[:length] ||= File.size(path)
options[:filename] ||= File.basename(path) unless options[:url_based_filename]
send_file_headers! options
#….
end
OOops… the send_file code modifies my class constant!
And after the first call the length and filename is placed in the class constant…
This is no problem in development mode because the classes are reloaded every time. In production mode every mongrel server has it’s own instance…
