Working With Rails

Use a plugin like attachment_fu or Paperclip.

I prefer attachment_fu if a model has an undetermined number of attachments (e.g. a photo album has many photos) and Paperclip if I know that there’s only a certain number of attachments (e.g. a user has one avatar).

I wrote a small step by step tutorial on setting up attachment_fu with image science:
http://blog.springenwerk.com/2008/05/setting-up-attachmentfu-for-rails-with.html

The post also has a link to a free chapter from the advanced rails recipes book which will answer your attachment_fu questions for sure.

- Johannes

You can use file_column plugin.

nstalling is pretty straightfoward, just like the majority of Rails plugins:

script/plugin install http://opensvn.csie.org/rails_file_column/plugins/file_column/trunk

The first thing we need is to tell our model which column to use:

class Blog < ActiveRecord::Base file_column :image
end

Now, if we want to include a upload mechanism in our form, we need to include some code like this:

<%= file_column_field “blog”, “image” %>

<%= image_tag url_for_file_column(“blog”, “image”) %>

We can extend things further, like for instance, I may want to upload only “jpg” and “gif” images and I want them to have a certain size:

class Blog < ActiveRecord::Base file_column :image

validates_file_format_of :image, :in => ["gif", "jpg"]
validates_filesize_of :image, :in => 1.kilobytes..5000.kilobytes
end

Using R-magick for resizing of images

class Blog < ActiveRecord::Base file_column :image,

:store_dir => “public/images/my_stupid_place_to_keep_images_uploaded”, :magick => {:versions => { :thumb => {:crop => “1:1”, :size => “86×87!”, :name => “peq”}, :normal => {:crop => “1:1”, :size => “289×258!”, :name=>”med”} } }
end

If all you need is file upload, you can do that in your model. http://gist.github.com/9323

If you need image magic stuff, go with paperclip, attachment fu etc.