Comments on: PaperClip: An Alternative Attachment / File Upload Plugin for Rails

By: Dragonfly: Image Handling For Champions

Dragonfly: Image Handling For Champions — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:40:08 +0000

[...] – another one?!”.. I hear you exclaim. While using Dragonfly in Rails is similar to using, say, Paperclip, a significant difference is that images are generated on the fly, as opposed to when uploaded. [...]

By: Povess

Povess — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:30:33 +0000

Yeah Paperclip is cool if you need a quick uploader tool. I'm building an app now that transcodes video files and a lot of other stuff - thumbnails, screen grabs, transfer the files to a CDN, etc. after upload. I thought Paperclip would be cool because the processors in Paperclip give you a place to do that but it's a freaking pain. I've ended up writing my own methods in my models to deal with all the functionality I need. Things like deleting the files, thumbnailing, naming, etc. Yeah it may remove the file attachment but leaves folders and the others files I create on upload. So almost all the benefits of it have been lost. I'm in process of just creating my own file management methods too. So once that's done goodbye paperclip. But I still would use it for quick image uploads. I do recommend it for that. The problem I see is that there a lot of cool plugins out there that get you going quick, but when you really look at the real functionality you need - upload a file, move it to a directory, and name it....do you really need a plugin?

By: Jose HG

Jose HG — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:09:58 +0000

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.

By: Akhil Bansal

Akhil Bansal — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:34:34 +0000

Hi,

I have used paper clip too, for one of my project. Its worth using it if you don't have much image handelling. :)

By: Timothy Johnson

Timothy Johnson — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:22:04 +0000

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.