Downloads

This is a simple and fairly thin extension that makes it easy to protect file downloads using nginx's internal redirects. It works something like this:

• You upload a file using the admin interface and grant access to a couple of reader groups. The file is stored outside the /public folder and can't be reached with a web browser
• A thin public-facing controller takes download requests and checks them against group membership
• If you're not allowed, it redirects you to reader login or just tells you off
• If you are allowed, it returns an attachment-download response pointing to a fictional address in /secure_download but with the X-Accel-Redirect header set to the real address of your file
• Your nginx configuration intercepts the X-Accel-Redirect header, ignores the request address and returns the file
• Your web browser reads the request address and gets the right file name
• Your nginx configuration also makes sure that typing in the /secure_download address doesn't give file access

In other words, there is no way to get at the uploaded file without going through the authenticating controller. The original inspiration is in Alexei Kovyrin's blog.

It ought to be an easy matter to make this work with Apache and sendfile, but I haven't needed to.

As with other group-access-control, a download with no groups attached is considered available, but here we are more restrictive and only make it available to logged in readers. If you want to publish a document for the public, you'd be better advised to upload it as a paperclipped asset.

Status

Should be reliable. It's quite well-established code. The original version used file_column so I've spent some time bringing it across to paperclip and writing proper tests.

Requirements

This uses spanner's reader and reader_group extensions for access control. If you would like to change the basis for allowing downloads, the easiest thing is probably to override or chain Download#available_to?. But do tell us what you're trying to do. We like to be useful.

Also requires paperclip gem, or the paperclipped extension (which currently vendors paperclip).

(We thought about just applying access control to paperclipped assets but the machinery there is too specialised for images: most of what goes in here will be pdfs and office documents. The separate store is tricky too.)

Configuration

In nginx

This is what I use:

location /secure_downloads/ {
	internal;
	root /your/site/directory/current/secure_downloads;	
	default_type  application/pdf;
	expires 1h;
	add_header  Cache-Control  private;
	break;
}

but I'm no nginx rypy. Suggestions would be very welcome.

(And naturally a security-minded person would only put this in the SSL-enabled version of the site, with the appropriate measures to direct people there).

In capistrano

Ideally we will be storing downloads in the shared directory rather than in /current, so that they persist through deployments. I can't see a good way to get at that directory without making unhelpful assumptions in the model, so instead I will assume that if you use capistrano, you're doing the right thing with symlinks on deployment:

after "deploy:setup" do
	sudo "mkdir -p #{shared_path}/secure_downloads"
	sudo "chown -R #{user}:#{group} #{shared_path}/secure_downloads"
end

after "deploy:update" do
	run "ln -s #{shared_path}/secure_downloads #{current_release}/secure_downloads" 
end

Note that secure_downloads is not inside the public site.

Usage

You'll see a 'downloads' tab in admin. Add files to the list there and you can link to them like this:

Bugs and comments

In lighthouse, please, or for little things an email or github message is fine.

Author and copyright

• Copyright spanner ltd 2007-9.
• Released under the same terms as Rails and/or Radiant.
• Contact will at spanner.org