Laravel + Image Intervention : Force download of file that is not saved - laravel

Question

I want to simply upload files , resize them and then force a download for every uploaded file. I do not want to save the files.
Resizing etc. works fine, however I cannot manage to force the download of the new file.
$content = $image->stream('jpg');
return response()->download($content, $name);
The shown snippet results in
is_file() expects parameter 1 to be a valid path, string given
Most probably because $content is not a path but the actual data.
Is there a way to enforce the download without saving it first?

Answer 1

Try this:
$url = "https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/blogs/38/2008/12/2598-75772.jpg";
$name = 'happy.jpg';
$image = Image::make($url)->encode('jpg');
$headers = [
'Content-Type' => 'image/jpeg',
'Content-Disposition' => 'attachment; filename='. $name,
];
return response()->stream(function() use ($image) {
echo $image;
}, 200, $headers);
Here's what we're doing. We're using Intervention Image to encode that image into the correct file type format for us. Then we're setting the browser headers ourselves to tell the browser what type of file it is and that we want the browser to treat it as a downloadable attachment. Lastly, we return the response using Laravel's stream() method and use a closure. We tell the closure it has access to the encoded data of the image with use ($image) and then we simply echo that raw data onto the page. From there we tell the browser the HTTP code is 200 (OK), and then give it our headers to tell the browser what to do.
Your problem was that Laravel's handy download() method is expecting it to be a file on the file system. So we have to stream it and manually set the headers ourselves.
You will need to write some additional code to handle different file extensions for the encode() method Intervention uses as well as the Content-Type returned. You can find a list of all available mime types here.
I hope this helps.
Edit: Later versions of Laravel introduced the deleteFileAfterSend() method on the response object. If you are okay with temporarily saving the file to the server you can do this:
return response()->download($path)->deleteFileAfterSend();