Paperclip Database Storage

Paperclip Database Storage is an additional storage option for Paperclip. It give you the opportunity to store your paperclip binary file uploads in the database along with all your other data.

Requirements

paperclip_database depends on paperclip

Installation

Paperclip Database Storage is distributed as a gem, which is how it should be used in your app.

Include the gem in your Gemfile:

gem "paperclip_database", "~> 2.0"

Or, if you want to get the latest, you can get master from the main paperclip repository:

gem "paperclip_database", :git => "git://github.com/softace/paperclip_database.git"

If you're trying to use features that don't seem to be in the latest released gem, but are mentioned in this README, then you probably need to specify the master branch if you want to use them. This README is probably ahead of the latest released version, if you're reading it on GitHub.

For rails 2 you should add this to snippet to your environment.

# In config/environment.rb
...
Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
  ...
  config.gem "paperclip", :version => "~> 2.4"
  ...
end

Supported Versions

Supported version are rails >= 2.3 and paperclip version >= 2.5

Quick Start

There is no quick start. You definitely need to understand how to use paperclip first.

Usage

You use paperclip_database by specifying database as storage for your paperclip and create a migration for the additional database table.

In your model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_attached_file :avatar, 
                    :storage => :database ## This is the essence
                    :styles => { :medium => "300x300>", :thumb => "100x100>" }
end

There is a migration generator that will create a basic migration for the extra table.

On the console (rails 2):

./script/generate paperclip_database_migration User avatar

On the console (rails 3):

rails generate paperclip_database_migration User avatar

The generated migration should be sufficient, but yo may consider adding additional code to it such as t.timestamps for adding standard rails timesstamps or a referential database constraint. If you add a refferential constraint with the option ON DELETE CASCADE, then you need to add the option :cascade_deletion => true to your paperclip has_attached_file declaration.

Development

To start develop, please download the source code

git clone git://github.com/softace/paperclip_database.git

When downloaded, you can start issuing the commands like

bundle install
bundle exec rake appraisal:gemfiles
bundle exec rake appraisal:install
bundle exec rake all

Or you can see what other options are there:

bundle exec rake -T

History

Paperclip Database Storage is heavily inspired by this blog by Pat Shaughnessy. The initial source code for that blog is no longer available, but the code in this gem is based on that initial code.