Laravel workaround for Symphony Download Response Error: "the filename fallback must only contain ASCII characters". Creates a tempfile for download. Also registers a shutdown function to clean tmp dir.

global.php

<?php
// Add include to app/start/global.php

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Shutdown cleanup
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Remove tmp files
*/

require app_path().'/shutdown.php';

ItemController.php

<?php
/**
 * @author      Daniel Kesberg <[email protected]>
 * @copyright   (c) 2014, Daniel Kesberg
 */
 
class ItemController extends BaseController
{
    public function download(Item $item)
    {
        // there is a problem with tempnam, copy und filesize:
        // if you use copy(), the filesize() function used by Response::download 
        // always returns 0 and you download an empty file
    
        // version 1: 
        // create tmpfile with tempnam and use stream_copy_to_stream
        $tmpFilename    = tempnam(realpath(app_path() . '/../tmp'), 'download');
        $downloadStream = fopen($item->filepath, 'r');
        $tmpStream      = fopen($tmpFilename, 'w');
        stream_copy_to_stream($downloadStream, $tmpStream);
        
        // version 2:
        // create tmpfile and add a random string to the generated filename
        $tmpFilename    = tempnam(realpath(app_path() . '/../tmp'), 'download');
        $tmpFilename    .= uniqid();
        copy($entry->pathSrc(), tmpFilename);
        
        // build the response
        // use Str::ascii on the original Filename
        // detect mime type 
        return Response::download($tmpFilename, Str::ascii($item->filename), array(
            'Content-Type'=> mime_content_type($item->filepath)
        ));
    }
}

shutdown.php

<?php
/**
 * @author      Daniel Kesberg <[email protected]>
 * @copyright   (c) 2014, Daniel Kesberg
 */

function cleanup_tmp()
{
    $path = realpath(app_path() . '/../tmp');
    $files = glob($path . '/download*');
    foreach($files as $file) {
        unlink($file);
    }
}

register_shutdown_function('cleanup_tmp');

Hit this problem too...

Came up with this workaround: https://gist.github.com/kimoi/9465a20c4e09d03c122a