external request for a file gives 404

Hi Team,
In our ci3 app we supply an external service with a web_url so they can take a copy of one of our files and analyse it before giving us a decision about its suitability for our site.
In ci4 I have used exactly the same idea but the 3rd party is saying they receive a 404 response so we are not getting good responses.
If I try to view the file in question by using the url I too get 404 but with a clue that the GET route is not defined.
eg https://www.mysite.com/images/uploads/te.../image.jpg
I have reviewed the routing docs and the smart file handling docs but am a bit mystified about how to enable this file to be retrieved externally.
I'm sure its easy but I cannot find the magic bullet ... yet.
Any clues appreciated, thx Paul

PHP Code:

Run - php spark Routes 


What did you Try? What did you Get? What did you Expect?

Joined CodeIgniter Community 2009.  ( Skype: insitfx )

OK I have run the spark command. Nice table of all my defined routes.
How do I specify a route so that someone can read/copy a specific file? (or more generally and file written to a temporary directory with a random file in it)

Is that image found within public/images/uploads/temp_dir/?

No I have a link in public to ../../images

Hi Team, its been a while since I posted because I have been trying to solve this issue. I haven't yet.
The latest situation is I now have a simple controller:

PHP Code:

<?php

namespace App\Controllers;

use CodeIgniter\Controller;

class RenderImage extends Controller
{
    public function index($tmpdir,$image)
    {
        if(($image = file_get_contents(TMP_IMAGE_UPLOAD.$tmpdir.'/'.$image)) === FALSE)
            show_404();

        // choose the right mime type
        $mimeType = 'image/jpg';

        $this->response
            ->setStatusCode(200)
            ->setContentType($mimeType)
            ->setBody($image)
            ->send();

    }
} 


The actual images are stored away from the public folder because I wasn't sure if the local .htaccess was causing me a problem.

Many thanks to SO article and contributor.
I send off a request that includes the url "https://imageRender/tmpfolder/image_file" to our service provider (WebPurify) and they in turn use it to try to get the image for their consideration.
However, I keep on getting 500 internal server errors when they request the image, and I have spent hours trying to figure out what is going wrong.
I can see the images successfully in different browsers.
I'm missing something quite subtle here.
Perhaps its a headers issue?
GET

scheme
https
host
www.goodnewsbig.com
filename
/imageRender/5bctoYptxum0/IMG_1886.JPG
Address
94.76.252.125:443
Status
200
OK
VersionHTTP/1.1
Transferred50.28 kB (49.43 kB size)
Request PriorityHighest
DNS ResolutionSystem


Cache-Control
no-store, max-age=0, no-cache
Connection
Upgrade, Keep-Alive
Content-Security-Policy
default-src 'self' https: 'unsafe-inline'; style-src 'self' https: 'unsafe-inline';font-src 'self' https:;img-src https: data: blob:
Content-Type
image/jpg; charset=UTF-8
Date
Tue, 27 May 2025 13:26:54 GMT
Keep-Alive
timeout=5, max=100
Permissions-Policy
geolocation=(),midi=(),sync-xhr=(),microphone=(),camera=(),magnetometer=(),gyroscope=(),fullscreen=(self),payment=()
Referrer-Policy
same-origin
Server
Apache/2.4.63 (Ubuntu)
Set-Cookie
HttpOnly;Secure
Strict-Transport-Security
max-age=15768000
Transfer-Encoding
chunked
Upgrade
h2
Vary
Origin
X-Content-Type-Options
nosniff
X-Download-Options
noopen
X-Frame-Options
SAMEORIGIN
X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies
none
X-XSS-Protection
1; mode=block

Accept
text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Encoding
gzip, deflate, br, zstd
Accept-Language
en-GB,en;q=0.5
Cache-Control
no-cache
Connection
keep-alive
Cookie
HttpOnly; GNB_cookies=dismiss; HttpOnly; GNB=39a67adc6966f3755346e4f87cb9f52e
Host
www.goodnewsbig.com
Pragma
no-cache
Priority
u=0, i
Sec-Fetch-Dest
document
Sec-Fetch-Mode
navigate
Sec-Fetch-Site
none
Sec-Fetch-User
?1
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests
1
User-Agent
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:138.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/138.0

I have no idea if its a CI4 issue but thought I would ask anyway.
regards, Paul

Try the inline download method instead of creating your own response and see if that works for you.

PHP Code:

<?php

namespace App\Controllers;

class RenderImage extends BaseController // extend the BaseController not the system framework controller
{
    public function index($tmpdir,$image)
    {
        $path = TMP_IMAGE_UPLOAD.$tmpdir.'/'.$image;
        if(FALSE === file_exists($path))
            throw \CodeIgniter\Exceptions\PageNotFoundException::forPageNotFound(); // not sure what your show_404 function does or where it comes from, but I imagine this is what it's doing

        return $this->response->download($path, null)->inline();
    }
} 


AbuseIPDB | Halberd | CodeIgniter Sandbox

Try the inline download method instead of creating your own response and see if that works for you.

PHP Code:

<?php

namespace App\Controllers;

class RenderImage extends BaseController // extend the BaseController not the system framework controller
{
    public function index($tmpdir,$image)
    {
        $path = TMP_IMAGE_UPLOAD.$tmpdir.'/'.$image;
        if(FALSE === file_exists($path))
            throw \CodeIgniter\Exceptions\PageNotFoundException::forPageNotFound(); // not sure what your show_404 function does or where it comes from, but I imagine this is what it's doing

        return $this->response->download($path, null)->inline();
    }
} 


OK tried that. In my own browser it downloads the image and I can open it and see it.
However when WebPurify try to get the image for moderation I see this in the logs:


c2-54-176-221-19.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com - - [27/May/2025:19:06:37 +0100] "HEAD /imageRender/dtPWxMe3Feax/IMG_1887.JPG HTTP/1.1" 404 4178 "-" "python-requests/2.18.4"
ec2-54-176-221-19.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com - - [27/May/2025:19:06:37 +0100] "GET /imageRender/dtPWxMe3Feax/IMG_1887.JPG HTTP/1.1" 404 5608 "-" "python-requests/2.18.4"

Any ideas please?