Page Contents

Media Views

class MediaView

Deprecated since version 2.3: Use Sending files instead.

Media views allow you to send binary files to the user. For example, you may wish to have a directory of files outside of the webroot to prevent users from direct linking them. You can use the Media view to pull the file from a special folder within /app/, allowing you to perform authentication before delivering the file to the user.

To use the Media view, you need to tell your controller to use the MediaView class instead of the default View class. After that, just pass in additional parameters to specify where your file is located:

class ExampleController extends AppController {
    public function download() {
        $this->viewClass = 'Media';
        // Download app/outside_webroot_dir/example.zip
        $params = array(
            'id'        => 'example.zip',
            'name'      => 'example',
            'download'  => true,
            'extension' => 'zip',
            'path'      => APP . 'outside_webroot_dir' . DS
        );
        $this->set($params);
    }
}

Here’s an example of rendering a file whose mime type is not included in the MediaView’s $mimeType array. We are also using a relative path which will default to your app/webroot folder:

public function download() {
    $this->viewClass = 'Media';
    // Render app/webroot/files/example.docx
    $params = array(
        'id'        => 'example.docx',
        'name'      => 'example',
        'extension' => 'docx',
        'mimeType'  => array(
            'docx' => 'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument' .
                '.wordprocessingml.document'
        ),
        'path'      => 'files' . DS
    );
    $this->set($params);
}

Settable Parameters

id

The ID is the file name as it resides on the file server including the file extension.

name

The name allows you to specify an alternate file name to be sent to the user. Specify the name without the file extension.

download

A boolean value indicating whether headers should be set to force download.

extension

The file extension. This is matched against an internal list of acceptable mime types. If the mime type specified is not in the list (or set in the mimeType parameter array), the file will not be downloaded.

path

The folder name, including the final directory separator. The path should be absolute but can be relative to the app/webroot folder.

mimeType

An array with additional mime types to be merged with MediaView internal list of acceptable mime types.

cache

A boolean or integer value - If set to true it will allow browsers to cache the file (defaults to false if not set); otherwise set it to the number of seconds in the future for when the cache should expire.