David's Computer Stuff Journal

Today, I needed to do something that I didn't find a handy method for in Rails. The API has both a send_data and send_file method, but they are both 'one shot' in that you have to send all your data at once.

def generate_file

  @headers["Content-Type"] = "text/comma-separated-values;"

  @headers["Content-Disposition"] = "filename=\"some.file.txt\";"


  i = 0

  render :text => Proc.new { |response, output|

    ...

    output.write("some generated text...")

    ...

  }, :layout => false

end

I more or less copied that from the send_file method, and indeed, I'll even admit that I'm not entirely sure why it works. What I don't get is what "connects" the output variable in the Proc to an actual file descriptor somewhere. render_text doesn't really clear things up (well, for me, at least!).

  def render_text(text = nil, status = nil) #:nodoc:

    @performed_render = true

    @response.headers['Status'] = (status || DEFAULT_RENDER_STATUS_CODE).to_s

    @response.body = text

  end

In any case, the code does do what I want - perhaps someone else will find it useful.

NOTE

Comments are broken, as the typo journal system seems to have been somewhat abbandoned... argh!