# \[ANN\] Page attachments extension **URL:** \ **Category:** Radiant CMS\ **Created:** [January 21, 2007, 4:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799 "2007-01-21T04:41:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 4:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/1 "2007-01-21T04:41:07Z")
I had mentioned this in the Radiant Core list a little while ago because I wanted people to test it out before I distributed it more widely, but I think it’s time to let it loose. Unlike the other extensions I have released in the last few weeks, I’m not putting this one in the Radiant repository, but keeping it in my own. It may end up there later, however. The basic idea is to create a simple way of managing ‘assets’ as ‘page attachments’ based on John’s original comps at [http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/browser/trunk/images/edit-page.png](http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/browser/trunk/images/edit-page.png) and [http://johnwlong.com/downloads/radiant/attachments/](http://johnwlong.com/downloads/radiant/attachments/). The UI is not _exactly_ the same, but I intend to fix that in the near future. Anyway, here’s the URL for the extension: [http://seancribbs.com/svn/rails/plugins/extensions/page\_attachments](http://seancribbs.com/svn/rails/plugins/extensions/page_attachments) Before you start using this, let me warn you about a few things. First, there is very little documentation other that what I have written for the tags. If you want image resizing (for the thumbnails), make sure you have RMagick installed. For Win32 this obviously means the full package that comes with IM. For \*nix, OS/X and others, use whatever is necessary to get it installed, which could be a package manager, or could be building from source. It can be tricky, so just be warned. Other than installation, everything else is pretty straightforward. Just checkout the extension into vendor/extensions, run `rake db:migrate:extensions`, then start up or restart your server. When you open a page for editing, cilck the ‘Attachments’ link toward the bottom to pop up the box for adding attachments. TODO: - Change the method of deleting attachments to not commit until page is saved. - Move the ‘minus’ icons up to one icon in the title bar and provide a way to select attachment boxes with JS/CSS. Enjoy, Sean C. ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 2:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/2 "2007-01-22T02:19:36Z")
> I had mentioned this in the Radiant Core list a little while > ago because > I wanted people to test it out before I distributed it more > widely, but > I think it’s time to let it loose. Unlike the other > extensions I have > released in the last few weeks, I’m not putting this one in > the Radiant > repository, but keeping it in my own. It may end up there > later, however. I just got around to testing this out to compare it with my own asset extension ([http://soxbox.no-ip.org/radiant/svn/extensions/part\_assets/](http://soxbox.no-ip.org/radiant/svn/extensions/part_assets/)) My extension is a little rougher around the edges than yours at the moment, but I’m planning on spending Tuesday night fixing that up (and removing the dependence on my other admin\_parts plugin) - it’s currently much f. In the meantime, could you please give my extension a spin an make any notes as to what you’d like to see changed to try and bring our extensions together? Some differences: - I’ve put the creation of a new asset into a popup window. Uploading of the asset happens when you submit the popup. My approach has the advantage that you immediately see the thumbnail of the image, and also the filename of the image, so that it’s a much easier thing to explain to people what to put in the \ tags. My approach also keeps attachments around in the case of a validation problem, and also ensures that the upload of the image occurs only once. In the popup, I’ve also made Title an attribute of an attachment. I’m not sure if that’s a good idea or not generally, but I wanted it for my stuff - I use the title in the title attributes of images, and it also gives another way to get reference the image. Regardless of whether title should be included there, using a popup gives somewhere for more attributes to go (transformation settings? notes?). One downside of my approach is that an asset uploaded for a page that is never saved is still going to sit around, but that’s not a biggy. - I’ve decided that the removal of assets should be another page down - the attachment gets its own page to edit the metadata (I haven’t checked this into my svn… ok. I haven’t done it yet.) - I’ve put in a lot more flexibility with image transformation using FlexImage. This provides a standard mechanism for doing resizing and prettying up - there needs to be some sort of image transformation library used. Implementing a transformation requires only dropping a .flexi file into the views folder. The downside to the approach that I’ve taken is that image transformation happens at request time and goes through the radiant cache - This will hopefully not be a problem once I get get action\_cache working (see earlier posts by me), which hopefully will get done before the end of the month (my webserver wont like me if I go live without it). - I store the original attachments in their own directory (not just in public/). I might make these blobs in the db - single thing to backup, and supports scaling to multiple webservers. The only reason I haven’t is that the rails logging will log the contents of those blobs in dev mode, making the logfiles explode. Will probably make this optional. - The urls for assets are referenced by users as sub-urls of the page that they’re attached to. This allows assets to be added to unpublished pages on the site and also remain unpublished. Also the urls look nicer. The downside is that /asset/ anywhere in the site will go through the asset controller method, but that’s not really a problem as it delegates back to the page finding mechanism if it doesn’t match an asset. Dan. ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 5:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/3 "2007-01-22T05:11:52Z")
Okay, got a comment (Not specifically directed at you) – A question too – Are the plug-ins specific to Mental/Trunk Radiant, or can they be used on either? and if specific, which is this for? As well, I see references to a lot of plug-ins; nothing updated on the site though. Maybe something easier to manage for plug-ins? Anyways, here’s me annoying again! Andrew ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 5:42am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/4 "2007-01-22T05:42:54Z")
Andrew, When we say ‘extension’ we are specifically referring to the ‘mental’ branch, aka version 0.6-long-before-release-alpha (a technical term 😉 ). ‘Plugins’ usually refer to plugins for Rails – add-ons for 0.5.x take this form most often. Unfortunately, there’s not any good documentation for either yet. Sean ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 5:39am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/5 "2007-01-22T05:39:54Z")
> Okay, got a comment (Not specifically directed at you) – A > question too > – Are the plug-ins specific to Mental/Trunk Radiant, or can they be > used on either? and if specific, which is this for? As well, I see > references to a lot of plug-ins; nothing updated on the site though. > Maybe something easier to manage for plug-ins? These are extensions - hence, the mental branch (which introduces radiant extensions). I’m guessing that extensions wont be discussed too much on the radiant site until mental goes live. Dan. ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 7:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/6 "2007-01-22T07:09:59Z")
> My extension is a little rougher around the edges than yours at the > moment, but I’m planning on spending Tuesday night fixing that up (and > removing the dependence on my other admin\_parts plugin) - Ok. Scratch that. Just re-jigged it a lot. Pulled in a couple of things from your design and moves to consistently using the word ‘Attachment’. Hence this is now the PartAttachments extension. [http://soxbox.no-ip.org/radiant/svn/extensions/part\_assets/](http://soxbox.no-ip.org/radiant/svn/extensions/part_assets/) So you’ll need to rename that dir to part\_attachments on the way down. Still depends on the admin\_parts extension (same repository), but I’ve removed the obnoxious bits of the admin\_parts extension, so it should just quietly stay out of the way. Dan. ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 6:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/7 "2007-01-22T18:18:00Z")
Any ETA on 0.6.0 or should I stick with 0.5.2 for live and maybe play with 0.6.0 on the side? Thanks! Andrew ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 3:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/8 "2007-01-22T15:43:12Z")
Daniel, While they seem to tackle the same problem, I think our extensions have very different philosophies and can thus probably live separate lives. Here’s some of the design decisions I made: 1. Uploaded files should live in the filesystem where the web server can serve them efficiently to the client. 2. Although logically it would be nice to have uploaded files live in a directory structure related to the page, page urls/slugs can change more easily than files can be moved. Thus it’s probably better that the storage location of files be orthogonal to the page layout. 3. Pages should be able to easily access the assets/files belonging to their parent(s). So, in-page tags that reference an asset also search through the parent pages until it is found. 4. acts\_as\_attachment has worked well for me in the past, so I’ll use that for handling the uploads and file management. 5. The UI should mimic John’s original comps as closely as possible. 6. John liked the way Basecamp allowed you to do multiple uploads (without a popup), so let’s do that similarly. I hope this reveals to you why I did certain things and not other things. I’ll continue to look through your code to see if there’s anything I can learn that might enhance page\_attachments. Sean ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 8:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/9 "2007-01-22T20:58:34Z")
Daniel S. wrote: > - I store the original attachments in their own directory (not just in > public/). I might make these blobs in the db - single thing to backup, > and supports scaling to multiple webservers. The only reason I haven’t > is that the rails logging will log the contents of those blobs in dev > mode, making the logfiles explode. Will probably make this optional. I haven’t played with either of these extensions yet but I just wanted to comment on the log file issue expressed above. Would it be easy enough to just add a “filter\_parameter\_logging” call to the file field? That SHOULD reduce the output in the logs to “[FILTERED]” [http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionController/Base.html#M000259](http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionController/Base.html#M000259) just a thought. matte ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 11:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/10 "2007-01-22T23:54:07Z")
I think once I get action\_cache working 1 & 2 will be a non-issue - if the assets are stored seperately and then cached efficiently you’ll get the same performance and also not have the problem of page movement interfering. For 3, I’m not really sure I see the need. In my extension, you can get a parent’s asset by wrapping the \ call in an \ - I don’t really understand why searching up the tree is necessary. But this is just a couple of lines in the tags file, so I don’t see it as a major difference. Can you give me an example of when you’d want this? acts\_as\_attachment is fine, but interferes with trying to do 1 & 2. Also, the image manipulations provided are fairly rudimentary - how easy is it for other extensions to specify their preferred image manipulations (for example, all images for articles need to be resized to by 200x200 and also need to be thumbnailed at 50x50?) 5 & 6 - I guess that’s just a difference in interface design - I think the popup guides the user better, but if that was the only point of difference it would be easy enough to extend the extension with an extra interface modification extension (well, once the view load order problem is fixed anyway). I’d really like us to get a unified data model going - I’ll try and get work done with action\_cache this week - it should be just as efficient as the acts\_as\_attachment method (well not quite as efficient, but little enough difference to matter), and it really does give us a lot more scope with what the extension can do. Dan. * * * From: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [[mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)] On Behalf Of Sean C. Sent: Tuesday, 23 January 2007 1:42 AM To: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid Subject: Re: [Radiant] [ANN] Page attachments extension Daniel, While they seem to tackle the same problem, I think our extensions have very different philosophies and can thus probably live separate lives. Here’s some of the design decisions I made: 1. Uploaded files should live in the filesystem where the web server can serve them efficiently to the client. 2. Although logically it would be nice to have uploaded files live in a directory structure related to the page, page urls/slugs can change more easily than files can be moved. Thus it’s probably better that the storage location of files be orthogonal to the page layout. 3. Pages should be able to easily access the assets/files belonging to their parent(s). So, in-page tags that reference an asset also search through the parent pages until it is found. 4. acts\_as\_attachment has worked well for me in the past, so I’ll use that for handling the uploads and file management. 5. The UI should mimic John’s original comps as closely as possible. 6. John liked the way Basecamp allowed you to do multiple uploads (without a popup), so let’s do that similarly. I hope this reveals to you why I did certain things and not other things. I’ll continue to look through your code to see if there’s anything I can learn that might enhance page\_attachments. Sean ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 12:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/11 "2007-01-25T12:27:29Z")
Hi Daniel, I see you mention that your extension uses FlexImage, is this reflected in your svn repository? The only reference I can see is that you have the following in your attachment model: def self.flex\_available Object.const\_defined? :FlexImage end Is FlexImage used within your extension at the moment? Maybe I’m just getting confused as to how you’re using it, as I can’t see any benefits over the usual acts\_as\_attachment/RMagick combination. Kev ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 4:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/12 "2007-01-25T16:23:34Z")
A statement in general about extensions: If your extension has any dependencies, it’s best to include them in the lib/ directory of the extension. That way you can avoid any ‘dependency hell’. The exception, of course, is gems and other libraries like RMagick that are potentially system-specific (i.e. binary) or require installation. The thing I liked about acts\_as\_attachment is that it still works even if you don’t have RMagick. Sean ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 7:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/13 "2007-01-25T19:18:33Z")
You’re not crazy. With the way the loading mechanism works, you don’t have to ‘require’ them, just use them. As long as the files are named in the standard Rails way (name of the class/module underscored), they will be loaded. Namespaced modules and classes of course should be put under directories that have the aforementioned convention. The problem you likely had with FeedParser is that the underscored form of that name is feed\_parser, so the file it would search for is feed\_parser.rb. The same would occur with its sub-modules/classes - feed\_parser/text\_converters.rb. Sean ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 5:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/14 "2007-01-25T17:53:02Z")
Getting FeedParser for Ruby to work out of the extension/lib directory for the RSS extension proved all but impossible as far as I could tell. All the same stands true for the Akismet library in commentable too. I just don’t think that the my\_extension/lib is in the path though I know it was in the plugins/behavior world and thought it worked earlier when playing with extensions: e.g. For RssReader the FeedParser module was setup such that it had a there is a file at lib/feedparser.rb and also a directory including some of it’s depedencies which it explicitely references using paths relative from the lib directory (e.g. require ‘feedparser/ textconverters’). I tried this setup as well as moving the supporting files out of the feedparser directory and directly into lib themselves (changing the relative paths in the require statements). After trying any number of tricks including giving the requires absolute paths from Radiant’s root (a la "vendor/extensions/ rss\_reader/lib/feedparser’) Everything I tried always got me the same error from mongrel on starting the server: /Applications/Locomotive2/Bundles/standardRailsSept2006.locobundle/ powerpc/lib/ruby/site\_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom\_require.rb:27:in `gem\_original\_require’: no such file to load – feedparser (MissingSourceFile) … Any Page types I’ve put in lib do get loaded so this is fishy to me. I hope I’m missing something, but as far as I can tell files in extension/lib are not reliably getting loaded? extension\_loader.rb has this: ``` def discover_extensions config.extension_paths.map do |path| Dir.glob("#{path}/*").sort.select { |f| File.directory? ``` (f) }.map do |ext\_path| load\_paths = %w(lib app/models app/controllers app/ helpers).map { |p| “#{ext\_path}/#{p}” } load\_paths \<\< ext\_path load\_paths.each { |p| config.load\_paths \<\< p } config.controller\_paths \<\< “#{ext\_path}/app/controllers” config.view\_paths \<\< “#{ext\_path}/app/views” @extension\_roots \<\< ext\_path end end.flatten end Which looks to me like it should be setting-up the necessary load paths to make things go… Am I crazy? Loren J. [www.fn-group.com](http://www.fn-group.com) ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 7:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/15 "2007-01-25T19:53:43Z")
(Sean re. extension/lib autoloads – thanks, that makes perfect sense though I’m still not sure I’m not crazy 🙂 Is there any magic way to add a javascript file reference to the header of my site pages without doing the obvious and just dropping it in my Layout? I’m currently writing a large extension which will be js heavy and I’d like to make it as clean as possible. Install and go. I walked through the site\_controller through parsing code this morning again and don’t see anything there, so, I guess I’d like to just confirm that I didn’t miss something. Thanks, Loren J. [www.fn-group.com](http://www.fn-group.com) ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 8:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/16 "2007-01-25T20:17:53Z")
Well, depends on whether you’re talking about a Radiant layout or a Rails layout (i.e. in the views/layouts directory). I might suggest when your extension activates, do some creation of the appropriate javascript files (if they don’t exist), either in the public directory or as pages in Radiant. I have an idea brewing in the back of my head about copying extension assets on installation or on demand, but I’ll probably want to talk it over with the rest of the team. Now if you’re just talking about the admin interface, you can write Javascript code directly into the layout with the content\_for block (I forget exactly what the section is, but look at app/views/admin/page/page.rhtml for an idea.) If you don’t want it in your template, just put it in a partial where it’s easier to update and render that partial inside the block. Did that answer your question? Sean ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 9:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/17 "2007-01-25T21:56:13Z")
Well, that sorta answers the question. I need to look web standards and js a bit. I definately want to manage the js file as a file and not as a page or snippet. I also think I’ll really need it to load within but that’s a web standards question. If it still works and validates and I can load the file in as body then that’s great. The file loads everything-up on window.onload anyhow so it won’t even try to load until after the HTML is done. I did see those methods as part of the Admin template and setup earlier and will be using themt (sorry don’t have it to refer at my fingertips right now either) for cleaning-up 2nd level navigation within a couple of admin applets. Ramble ramble. Thanks, I’ll see what I find out about .js file loading in the . Loren J. [www.fn-group.com](http://www.fn-group.com) ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 10:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-page-attachments-extension/82799/18 "2007-01-25T22:11:16Z")
I’ll be on IRC until I leave work if you have some more questions. Sean