Working With Rails

This may sound silly, but did you restart your (mongrel) server after the plugin install? And you didn’t call your class ‘File’ or something like that did you?

After install the plugin or gem you have to restart your server after that the change is reflect ..

If that is literally what you ran to install attachment_fu then your problem is the HTML around the repository location, it should be:
ruby ./script/plugin install http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/plugins/attachment_fu/

oh haha, i didn’t know i had to restart WEBrick. i don’t think i did.

Well, i just restarted WEBrick and I get another error.

First let me tell you, I followed the PDF titled “Upload Images with Thumbnails” from this page: http://pragprog.com/titles/fr_arr/advanced-rails-recipes

I followed it word for word and I got this error:

Mysql::Error: Table 'attachment_fu_example_development.albums' doesn't exist: SHOW FIELDS FROM `albums`

It looks as though the author neglected to mention that I have to create an Album table as well? It’s also possible that since I downloaded just one chapter, the previous chapter had already mentioned that.

Anyway, is that the problem here? And if so, would an Albums table with the following structure suffice:
title :string
artist : string
cover_id :int

Jim Remsik,
actually, I think the pre tag on this forum added the HTML anchor tag…maybe it first processes the BBCode and then applies the pre tag?

Thanks :)

Have you read the instructions by Rick himself? – http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/plugins/attachment_fu/README
Personally I think they are pretty clear on what you need to do …

@Clemens Kofler,

Thanks for that suggestion :)
I actually thought a tutorial might be easier to follow but the README was surprisingly simple.

I gave it a shot and got it all working although I think I may have done something wrong.

I created a table via migrations with the fields required for attachment_fu..i also added a few other fields to this same table:

mysql> describe wraps;
+--------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field        | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+--------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id           | int(11)      | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment | 
| name         | varchar(255) | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| description  | varchar(255) | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| price        | decimal(8,2) | YES  |     | 0.00    |                | 
| image        | varchar(255) | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| created_at   | datetime     | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| updated_at   | datetime     | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| size         | int(11)      | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| content_type | varchar(255) | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| filename     | varchar(255) | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| height       | int(11)      | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| width        | int(11)      | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| parent_id    | int(11)      | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| thumbnail    | varchar(255) | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
+--------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
14 rows in set (0.00 sec)

also, my model looks like this:

  1 class Wrap < ActiveRecord::Base
  2   has_attachment  :content_type => :image,
  3                   :max_size => 500.kilobyte,
  4                   :resize_to => [100,100],
  5                   :thumbnails => {:kurumitta => [20,20], :geometry => 'x50'},
  6                   :storage => :file_system
  7 
  8   validates_as_attachment
  9 end

so now, since i have ‘kurumitta’ and ‘geometry’ as my thumbnails, it looks like attachment_fu is creating 3 entries in that table (the third is for the original image) on every submit.

so i guess i should have two separate tables? but how would i link the attachment_fu table (lets call that Table A) to the other table which contains my items description, price and name? (call this Table B)

Thanks for your time so far.

I think I’ve figured it out.

If the attachment_fu table was called ‘photos’ and the other table was called ‘wraps’, then my models for those two tables should use relationships (has_one and belongs to), right?

and i should add an coumn named wraps_id to the photos table, right?

With attachment_fu you will usually have two separate models … In one of my apps, for example, I have an Event that has_many :photos. The attachment_fu columns sit in the photos table. If you want a file upload plugin that doesn’t require a separate model and table, you could use Paperclip – I’ve used it for two projects now and it works even better than attachment_fu.

@Clemens Kofler,
Thanks again.

I used Paperclip and got most of it working.
I used the README as well as
Jim Neath’s Paperclip: Attaching Files in Rails on April 17th, 2008

i do have a problem though, only the default image gets saved, the dimensions defined in :styles don’t get saved.

this is my model:

  1 class Wrap < ActiveRecord::Base
  2   has_attached_file :photo,
  3                     :styles => {:thumb => "100x100#",
  4                                 :small => "150x150>"},
  5                     :whiny_thumbnails => true
  6 end

since i have :whiny_thumbnails set to true, this is the error i get once i submit:

    * Photo /tmp/stream.14642.0 is not recognized by the 'identify' command.
    * Photo /tmp/stream.14642.0 is not recognized by the 'identify' command.

Also, script/console shows me this:

ActionController::RoutingError (No route matches "/photos/5/thumb/Ubuntu.png" with {:method=>:get}):
.
.
.

ActionController::RoutingError (No route matches "/photos/5/small/Ubuntu.png" with {:method=>:get}):
.
.
.

there’s a lot more text in the two lines of error messages above, but i truncated it to just what i think will be helfpul to figure out the issue.

do i have to use Paperclips :path option so solve this? i think that might be it because this is my current directory structure for Paperclips folder:

$ ls -hR public/photos/5/
public/photos/5/:
original

public/photos/5/original:
Ubuntu.png

Also, how would I modify the edit view to accept a new image, supposing the user wanted to replace the current image with another one?

taking another look at the log output, it looks like it’s a routing error, right?

so it looks like i will have to either change ’:path’ in my model for the has_attached_file option or add a line to my routing.rb. it looks like the prior is the more elegant solution.
only, i don’t know how i should alter the ’:path’

You need to configure the paths accordingly. Here’s what I have in a project:
has_attached_file :image, :path => ":rails_root/public/images/products/:id.:extension", :url => "/images/products/:id.:extension"
This puts the uploaded files in /public/images/products/1.jpg if the product’s id is “1” and the file type is “jpg”. This way, I can use it with the image_tag helper. You should also note that I don’t use thumbnails, therefore there’s only one type of images and I don’t use the :style option.

There’s lots of options, so it’s best to take a look at the file vendor/plugins/paperclip/lib/paperclip/attachment.rb – it shows you most of the options including so-called interpolations (like :rails_root, :class, etc.).

HTH