Upload files using Paperclip on Ruby on Rails

Paperclip is an awesome plugin to handle file uploads in Ruby on Rails. I’ve been using in a couple of projects lately and I thought I’d talk a bit about it.

First of all, you need to install the plugin on your project by doing:

script/plugin install git://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip.git

from your project main directory. After this, usage is very simple.

Let’s imagine I have a user model and I want to have a avatar attribute to include a picture of the user and let’s say we want that avatar to be resized to 3 different sizes (120×120, 48×48 and 26×26). Paperclip does this using ImageMagick.

We’re first going to create a migration to hold all this information:

class AddAttachmentsAvatarToUser < ActiveRecord::Migration

  def self.up

    add_column :users, :avatar_file_name, :string

    add_column :users, :avatar_content_type, :string

    add_column :users, :avatar_file_size, :integer

    add_column :users, :avatar_updated_at, :datetime

  end



  def self.down

    remove_column :users, :avatar_updated_at

    remove_column :users, :avatar_file_name

    remove_column :users, :avatar_content_type

    remove_column :users, :avatar_file_size

  end

end

Then we define the attribute in the model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

has_attached_file :avatar, :styles => { :large => "120x120>", :medium => "48x48>", :thumb => "26x26>" }

end

Here’s an example on how your form should be:

<% form_for :user, @user, :url => user_path, :html => { :multipart => true } do |form| %>

    <%= form.file_field :avatar %>

  <% end %>

Your controller doesn’t have to do anything specific to handle the avatar, just save the user as usual.

  def create

    @user = User.create( params[:user] )

  end

And finally, if you want to show the avatar in your view, here’s some examples:

  <%= image_tag @user.avatar.url %>

  <%= image_tag @user.avatar.url(:medium) %>

  <%= image_tag @user.avatar.url(:thumb) %>

That wasn’t very difficult. There’s some advance stuff you can do with Paperclip, like upload via a URL or upload your files to Amazon’s S3 or define post processing operations on your files.

So get creative and use it in your projects.

Update: The WebFellas have a very deep and interesting article about Paperclip, check it out.