recipe for downloading files

Is there a recipe for downloading files in Rails? I’m kind of new to Rails (and Ruby) and not finding much help on this subject on the net.

In my app, I have a page with a list of files (mostly pdf but there are other types like doc, xls, etc.). The list of files is generated by a statement in the controller index method by reading the content of a specific directory (no model):

@files = Dir.glob(path_to_files)

In the index.html.erb, a loop lists the files. Next to each filename, I want to have a download link, such that, when the user clicks it, it invokes the download method in the controller:

send_file = @current_file.to_s

So far, I haven’t been successful implementing this scheme so any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
-c