Original filename doesn't display in file_field

Rails
1

In my item upload view I have:

<%= file_field ‘item’, ‘file’ %>

and in my Item model:

def file
@file
#@file.original_filename # ← also tried this
end

def file=(file)
@file=file
end

And if the upload bails because of errors (and renders the same page),
all other fields
(text_field, text_area, etc.) retain their inputted values, but the file
field is blank. Any idea
what the problem is?

I’m using this tutorial as a guide:
http://manuals.rubyonrails.com/read/chapter/79

thanks
csn

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2

Have a look at the approach taken by Sebastian K. in his
file_column plugin [1]. When a file upload form had errors and needs
to be re-displayed, he uses a hidden field to reference the file that
had been previously uploaded to the server.

The ‘value’ attribute of a form “file” input represents only the name
of the file, not the file’s content [2] [3]. My guess is that not all
browsers will actually upload a file when you haven’t explicitly
selected it with the file input’s browse dialog (?). It does work in
Firefox though.

Gerret

[1] http://www.kanthak.net/opensource/file_column/
[2] http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/file.html
[3] RFC 1867 - Form-based File Upload in HTML (RFC1867)