Working With Rails

Activeupload

The activeupload plugin is a rails plugin that enables simple AJAX style uploading of files to a web server. The plugin achieves this by using a slightly modified version of SWFUpload (http://swfupload.mammon.se/) in conjunction with a rails controller to upload the files and populate a database table. Then a custom form helper populates a polymophic association connecting those attachments to any object in your application.

To use this plugin first you must generate the migration, model and controller:

./script/generate activeupload

add the following line to any model to define the polymorphic association to attachments:

has_many :attachments, :as => :attachable

def attachment_id=(attachment_id)
  unless attachment_id.blank?
    attachment.clear
    attachment_ids = attachment_id.split(",")
    attachment_ids.each do |a_id|
      unless a_id.blank?
        attachment = Attachment.find(a_id)
        attachments << attachment
      end
    end
  end
end

def attachment_id
  returning result = "" do
    if attachments
      attachments.each do |attachment|
        result << ",#{attachment.id}" 
      end
    end
  end
end

Then then to populate the association add the following to your models new and edit views:

Attachments
<%= f.attachments_field :attachment_id, { :add => "true", :edit =>"true", :filesize => 30720, :filetypes => [ ".gif", ".jpg", "*.png" ] } %>

And add the following to your models show view:

Attachments
<%= view_attachments_field(@bench, {})  %>

Next, make sure the view helper is accessible to all the views by adding the following line to your app/helpers/application_helper.rb:

include ActiveUploadHelper

Finally, add the necessary javascript and css to your layout (This plugin uses the prototype library, so make sure you include the defaults javascript if you haven’t already):

<%= javascript_include_tag :defaults %>
<%= stylesheet_link_tag 'swfupload_theme' %>
<%= javascript_include_tag "swfupload_callbacks.js" %>
<%= javascript_include_tag "SWFUpload.js" %>

NOTE: This description has been extracted from the Plugin README and so the formatting may need updating to make browser friendly