Paperclip::Eitheror

A Paperclip Storage which supports a secondary (called 'or') storage as a fallback while using the primary one (called 'either').

The purpose of this gem is to help us while migrating our assets to a different place, a better place <3

Dependency versions are locked to the current versions we have running.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'paperclip-eitheror'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install paperclip-eitheror

Given you have the gem installed and some model, you need to configure your attachment with storage: :eitheror, and set up the primary (either) and the secondary/fallback (or) storages:

has_attached_file :avatar, {
  storage: :eitheror,
  either: {
    storage: :fog
  },
  or: {
    storage: :filesystem
  }
}

You can use specific configuration by passing them on one of the storages config. For instance:

has_attached_file :avatar, {
  storage: :eitheror,
  either: {
    storage: :fog,
    path: ':attachment/:id/:style/:filename',
    url: ':attachment/:id/:style/:filename'
  },
  or: {
    storage: :filesystem,
    path: ':rails_root/public/attachments/:class/:attachment/:style/:filename'
  }
}

The configuration for each storage inherits whatever attributes are defined at the configuration top level config, and existing attributes may be overridden with storage specific values. For example:

has_attached_file :avatar, {
  storage: :eitheror,
  url: '/api/v1/attachments/:attachment/:id/:style',
  path: ':rails_root/public/attachments/:class/:attachment/:style/:filename',
  either: {
    storage: :fog,
    path: ':attachment/:id/:style/:filename',
    url: ':attachment/:id/:style/:filename'
  },
  or: {
    storage: :filesystem,
  }
}

In the example above, the storage or will inherit the attributes path and url from the base configuration, while either will provide its own path and url attributes. The following configuration is equivalent:

has_attached_file :avatar, {
  storage: :eitheror,
  either: {
    storage: :fog,
    path: ':attachment/:id/:style/:filename',
    url: ':attachment/:id/:style/:filename'
  },
  or: {
    storage: :filesystem,
    url: '/api/v1/attachments/:attachment/:id/:style',
    path: ':rails_root/public/attachments/:class/:attachment/:style/:filename',
  }
}

That is particularly useful when globally configuring paparclip-eitheror.

On large codebases it might become very tedious and error prone to chase down all paperclip usages and adapt their configuration to use paperclip-eitheror. An alternative is to configure paperclip default options to use paperclip-eitheror as the default storage.

# config/initializers/paperclip.rb

Paperclip::Attachment.default_options[:storage] = :eitheror
Paperclip::Attachment.default_options[:either] = {
  storage: :fog,
  path: ':attachment/:id/:style/:filename',
  url: ':attachment/:id/:style/:filename',
}

Paperclip::Attachment.default_options[:or] = {
  storage: :filesystem,
}

Since storages inherit configuration from the base config, you would not have to change any of your existing models and in this case the or storage would inherit the configuration on your models acting as your existing storage.

In case you need a particular model to NOT be affected by the global configuration, you can explicitly define the storage type you want the model to use as part of its has_attached_file options:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_attached_file :avatar, storage: :filesystem
end

You can configure paperclip-eitheror to automatically synchronize attachments from the or (fallback) storage to either (primary).

When :autosync is set to true, whenever an attachment which exists only on or is accessed, the attachment will be synced to the primary storage and access (such as path and url) will be provided through the primary storage.

has_attached_file :avatar, {
  storage: :eitheror,
  autosync: true,
  ...
}

In case you need to set up paperclip-eitheror on your app, but are not yet ready to enable the primary storage, you may disable it by using enabled: false in the either options list, as follows:

has_attached_file :avatar, {
  storage: :eitheror,
  either: {
    storage: :fog,
    enabled: false,
    path: ':attachment/:id/:style/:filename',
    url: ':attachment/:id/:style/:filename'
  },
  or: {
    storage: :filesystem,
    url: '/api/v1/attachments/:attachment/:id/:style',
    path: ':rails_root/public/attachments/:class/:attachment/:style/:filename',
  }
}

That comes specially handy if you need to enable/disable the primary storage based off a config flag, allowing, for instance, the primary storage to be disabled on a per-environment basis.

Different storages provide different ways of accessing attachments. For instance, when using :fog storage, you have access to methods which only make sense to that particular storage. Or when you're migrating your assets from a :filesystem storage to a :fog storage, you might not want to go after every reference to attachment.url in your code in order to change it to attachment.public_url.

paperclip-eitheror gives you the ability to provide an :alias key, which then will allow you to tell it how to behave when such scenario happens.

For instance:

has_attached_file :avatar, {
  storage: :eitheror,
  either: {
    storage: :fog,
    alias: {
      url: :public_url
    }
  },
  or: {
    storage: :filesystem,
  }
}

Int he example above we're telling paperclip-eitheror that whenever avatar.url is called, the :fog storage will delegate it to attachment.public_url. Mapping fog.url to fog.public_url seems like a very straight-forward mapping.

Not always mapping from one method to another is going to be that simple, you can write you own overrides by mapping a method to a lambda, like so:

has_attached_file :avatar, {
  storage: :eitheror,
  either: {
    storage: :fog,
    alias: {
      url: ->(either_storage, or_storage, attachment, *args) do
        puts "Look, I can do whatever I want"
      end
    }
  },
  or: {
    storage: :filesystem,
  }
}

The lambda will receive as parameters both storages (either and or), the attachment instance and any other arguments given when the method was called.

After checking out the repo, run bundle install to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/powerhome/paperclip-eitheror. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.