File_column vs. acts_as_attachment

We use file_column in a few apps but it doesn’t seem to be actively
developed any more.

I know Rick has acts_as_attachment that seems to do everything
file_column
does (or at least everything we’re doing).

Is acts_as_attachment the future of easily handling file uploads in
Rails?
What are you guys (the list) doing? What’s working well?

Curious to hear about comparisons or especially from folks that have
switched from file_column to acts_as_attachment.

Cheers,
H

I’d be interested in this as well… I use file_column a lot, especially
with image resizing / manipulation.

I’ve been wondering the same thing lately…

On 8/31/06, HH [email protected] wrote:

Curious to hear about comparisons or especially from folks that have
switched from file_column to acts_as_attachment.

Cheers,
H


seth at subimage interactive
http://www.subimage.com/sublog/

On Aug 31, 2006, at 10:45 AM, subimage interactive wrote:

Is acts_as_attachment the future of easily handling file uploads in
Rails?
What are you guys (the list) doing? What’s working well?

Curious to hear about comparisons or especially from folks that have
switched from file_column to acts_as_attachment.

Cheers,
H

Yeah I dropped file_colun myself a while ago and now I use

acts_as_attachment when i need a good file upload plugin. I won’t go
back to file_column.

-Ezra

just to add weight to the the question, I happily use file_column but
would be interested to know why people have switched…
regards
c

I love f_c too so far. I have only needed it for images so far, and the
rmagick does the trick nicely. Ezra, please chime in on a_a_a

@Ezra:

What really stuck out that made you switch?

it seems we’re all a little bit interested in this

On Aug 31, 2006, at 11:43 AM, Timothy J. wrote:

I love f_c too so far. I have only needed it for images so far, and
the
rmagick does the trick nicely. Ezra, please chime in on a_a_a


Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Acts as attachment has a nicer interface IMHO. The code is very

clean and I have found it much easier to extend when I need to. It
also allows for storing files in the db or the filesystem or both in
the same app. Sometimes certain things are great for the db like
avatars but most things are better stored on the fs. It is nice to be
able to have both. AAA allows for all the thumbnailing and RMagick
stuff you want to use as well.

The filecolumn code base has gotten a bit bloated and harder to

alter for custom purposes. And I have found the mime type handling in
aaa to be better. I built my own custom RMagick extensions to the aaa
and it was much easier to do with aaa then it would be with
filecolumn. Of course Rick O. wrote most of the code for aaa and
as we all know, his code is some of the best out there in railsland.

Both plugins in the end pretty much accomplish the same thing. I

personally prefer the API and flexibility of acts_as_attachment over
file_column. As soon as you need to step out of the comfort and
customize things is where aaa really shines. When I was using
file_column and needed to bend it to my will and actaully dug into
the code was when decided aaa was the better solution.

-Ezra

FYI - I did finally get it work, on OS X only. The issues with windows
and the GNU ‘file’ command were too much of a pain.

Were you having f_c problems or problems installing rMagick and
ImageMagick? I would say those latter ones are the beast.

Timothy J.

I didn’t get that far on Windows, I did have issues with xMagick on OS
X, but with patience and methodically changing and recompiling, I got
it to work. I had to make sure to remove my old ‘image’ directories
that f_c had created before as well…

  • Nic.

On 8/31/06, Timothy J. [email protected] wrote:

Timothy J.


Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

  • Nic

Were you having f_c problems or problems installing rMagick and
ImageMagick? I would say those latter ones are the beast.

Timothy J.

I see that a lot with Acts as Attachment installs too. If someone
wants to write minimagick layer, I’d be open to including that in Acts
as Attachment. Currently I do all my operations in a with_image
block.

with_image binary_data do |img|

end

I don’t know how close the minimagick api is to the Magick::Image class.

But, I don’t know what use this is for folks that can’t get
imagemagick itself to install.


Rick O.
http://weblog.techno-weenie.net
http://mephistoblog.com

acts_as_attachment + rmagick isn’t going to work well on Windows either
unless you drop back to Ruby 1.8.2… rmagick still does not work with
the
windows build of ruby 1.8.4.

I’m glad to see this is finally discussed, and that there is an
alternative.

I see so many people ask for an upload solution, and everyone says to
use file_column, but I’ve had nothing but trouble. Because of my
problems, I notice a lot more when others post f_c issues to this list
and the attitude seemed to be that since it works for the majority, we
must be doing something wrong!

FYI - I did finally get it work, on OS X only. The issues with windows
and the GNU ‘file’ command were too much of a pain.

Thanks Ezra for the mini-review!

  • Nic

On 8/31/06, Ezra Z. [email protected] wrote:

Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

customize things is where aaa really shines. When I was using
file_column and needed to bend it to my will and actaully dug into
the code was when decided aaa was the better solution.

-Ezra

  • Nic

Whoa… looks like i might have spoken too soon… there appears to be a
new
version of rmagick for windows! I’ll be testing that out!

On 31 Aug 2006, at 19:11, HH wrote:

What are you guys (the list) doing? What’s working well?

Curious to hear about comparisons or especially from folks that have
switched from file_column to acts_as_attachment.

I must say (and it’s probably not Rick’s fault, because his code is
very clean, a lot cleaner than filecolumn) using acts_as_attachment
on a a2hosting running 64-bit CentOS kills your app. It dies with a
bug segmentation fault when trying to start it up. No problems with
filecolumn on a2hosting. On the other hand, I’m using
acts_as_attachment on several other VPS’s without any problem and
stay away from using filecolumn if possible.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

If you guys dont mind storing images in your database (and caching the
output) FlexImage is pretty badass.

http://beautifulpixel.com/flex_image/index.html

Dynamic resizing of images as they are requested, not at upload time.
It’s very flexible, especially if you change the size you want to
display images.

Only works with images of course but it handles imge quite well.

On 9/1/06, Brian H. [email protected] wrote:

Whoa… looks like i might have spoken too soon… there appears to be a
new version of rmagick for windows! I’ll be testing that out!

I’ve used RMagick with ruby 1.8.4 and AAA without any trouble at all on
XP.

He Peter,

have you read the comment at the bottom of:
http://technoweenie.stikipad.com/plugins/show/Acts+as+Attachment

There it says:
When using a shared host such as a2hosting, make sure you freeze the
gems using “rake rails:freeze:gems” when using acts_as_attachment
or your application will die with a segmentation fault error.

just for you rinfo