Working with encrypted files in Laravel (how to download decrypted file)

Question

In my webapp, users can upload files. Before being saved and stored, the contents of the file are encrypted using something like this:

Crypt::encrypt(file_get_co         


        

Answer 1

Laravel 5.6 allows you to use streams for downloads: https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/responses#file-downloads

So in your case:

return $response()->streamDownload(function() use $decryptedContents {
    echo $decryptedContents;
}, $fileName);

Answer 2

You could manually create the response like so:

$encryptedContents = Storage::get($fileRecord->file_path);
$decryptedContents = Crypt::decrypt($encryptedContents);

return response()->make($decryptedContents, 200, array(
    'Content-Type' => (new finfo(FILEINFO_MIME))->buffer($decryptedContents),
    'Content-Disposition' => 'attachment; filename="' . pathinfo($fileRecord->file_path, PATHINFO_BASENAME) . '"'
));

You can check out the Laravel API for more info on what the parameters of the make method are. The pathinfo function is also used to extract the filename from the path so it sends the correct filename with the response.