Batch downloads in Ruby on Rails

I've got a Ruby on Rails app and I was wondering what the best way do do batch downloads would be? At any given time I've got a set of URLs that point to files that I want my users to be able to download, but based on a search of those files done by my users I want them to be able to download a subset of those files, say the search result, in one process instead of having them download them individually. This set of files may potentially number in the thousands. My real question is, based on an array of URLs, how do I enable my app to download that entire set at once? I of course did some Googling and I came up with the solution below. It doesn't seem to work for me, but it did seem to work for those who posted it as a solution for a similar problem. Any and all input would be appreciated.

# controller code
def download
   for n in 0..(@urls.length - 1)
      send_file(@urls[n], :type => "video/quicktime", 
                          :filename => @urls[n].basename, 
      开发者_StackOverflow社区                    :disposition => "attachment")
   end
end

# view code
<%= link_to 'Download them all', :controller => 'my_controller', 
                                 :action => 'download' %>

This approach seems to me that it will use a huge amount of memory, especially with 1000s of files downloaded per user at a time. Perhaps instead you should ZIP the files in the background after they click a link and then send it to the user or email them the location of where the ZIP's at. It'll still use a lot of memory to ZIP that many files, so perhaps offloading that task to another server would be good.