Download files from Laravel

Question

I would like create endpoint in Laravel which I can use in Linux to download zip archive.

I created:

public function download_templates()
{
    return response()->file(base_path() . '/sites/templates.zip');
}

But when I use:

wget http://linktopage.com/api/download_templates

In result I receive HTML code of endpoint.

Someone has idea?

Possible duplicate of [Download files in laravel using Response::download](https://stackoverflow.com/q/20415444/608639) — jww, Oct 13 '18 at 03:21

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 12 '18 at 20:02

To initialize file download response should contain headers indicating that it's attachment otherwise browser will print content.

According to the laravel docs "file" method is used in case you want just to output file contents without downloading. For downloading there is method "download" which forces download.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 12 '18 at 20:33

just use this code if you are using 5.*

return response()->download(public_path('/sites/templates.zip'));

also, I changed base_path() to public_path(), so you have to put the file in Public, if not you can use the base_path() instead of public_path() in the code above.

Download files from Laravel

2 Answers2