PaperClip: An Alternative Attachment / File Upload Plugin for Rails
In Goodbye attachment_fu, hello Paperclip, The Web Fellas present a walkthrough of Paperclip, a new(ish) Rails plugin that makes file (and particularly image) uploads easy. It's well worth a read, especially if you're just starting to develop a new app and are looking at which file upload technique to go with.
Paperclip is compelling firstly because it's developed by thoughbot, a team of ridiculously talented Rails developers who've released a lot of awesome Rails-related projects (such as Shoulda, Factory Girl, and Jester). Secondly, it offers some awesome features: no extra database tables needed to refer to files/attachments, only one library required for image processing (ImageMagick), and a very easy way to refer to files (as attributes on the main model, basically).
The official documentation is here, but Jim Neath has also written a full Paperclip tutorial that will take you from start to finish.
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November 10th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I've been using Paperclip as my default for over a year now, and I can tell you it is well worth it. I have even switched old applications over from A-fu to using Paperclip because of its simplicity and utility.
For everyone who asks the question: How do you have many attachments to a model like Attachment-fu does? Well easily enough you can make a separate Model with a has_many relationship (like A-fu does by default) and define your Paperclip attachment there, instead of in the model directly. I find this to be the win, that I can just define a has_one attachment directly in the model, or break it out into its own class with all the attributes it needs.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Hi,
I have used paper clip too, for one of my project. Its worth using it if you don't have much image handelling. :)
November 28th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I've tried PaperClip but I can't say goodbye to A-fu.
PaperClip doesn't work as reliably as A-fu with files other than images.
I need to upload PDF and Word docs, just to name a couple. PaperClip crashes with PDFs.
So for handling a wide-range of file formats and dependable performance, A-fu is still the way to go for me.