Upload storage: database vs. file system

Rails
1

while reading through the agile web development book, i was kind of
surprised to see that uploaded files were stored in the database. maybe
this isn’t anything new, but it was the first time i had seen file
uploads handled this way. it seems like that’s the way most of the
articles and tutorials i’ve found have shown to do it. why is this? is
there something better about storing the file in the database, or is it
for convenience?

sorry if this has been posted a hundred times before, there was nothing
i could find on why most rails apps handle files this way.

2

On 9/18/06, Josh [email protected] wrote:

sorry if this has been posted a hundred times before, there was nothing
i could find on why most rails apps handle files this way.

I don’t know that I’d say most rails apps handle files this way.
Certainly there are some situations where this is done, but I would
hazzard
a guess that this is a minority of times.

ActsAsAttachment defaults to filesystem, but gives the option of db
storeage. I guess it’s up to personal preference.

There have been some very large threads on the rails list a while ago
regarding this that went into a lot of detail.

A very quick search at www.ruby-forum.com turned up

http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/54239#33224

http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/71824#100751

Hope that helps

3

Daniel N wrote:

uploads handled this way. it seems like that's the way most of the

I don’t know that I’d say most rails apps handle files this way.
turned up

Db vs filesystem - Rails - Ruby-Forum

Upload file in a database or a server? - Rails - Ruby-Forum

Hope that helps

I imagine the points if discussion are:

  1. If it’s in the DB, it scales well - when you move to a multi-server
    architecture for hosting your application, the data from the DB will be
    available to all processes… whereas you may have some concerns if the
    file you want is stored on the file system of one server.

  2. If it’s in the DB, it’s very easy to protect access to the data by
    using a controller. It’s slightly (not much) more complicated if you’re
    storing it on the file system.

  3. I imagine that if you do not want to protect access to your file
    (i.e., it is stored in a publicly accessible location), then it may be
    slightly faster to serve it up as ‘static content’ by getting the
    webserver to send it out rather than sending it through the application
    server.

However, I may be wrong in all the points above… :smiley:

Cheers
Mohit.

4

ActsAsAttachment defaults to filesystem, but gives the option of db
storeage. I guess it’s up to personal preference.

I actually wrote it for db-backed storage because file_column did the
file stuff.

In my experience, it’s usually better to keep the files on disk unless
you’re talking really small or dynamic files. The rails send_file()
method will stream larger files in chunks, rather than requiring you
to load the whole file in memory and send it. Private files should of
course be saved outside of the public path too.

If you are using db files, you could employ some kind of page caching
that writes the asset to the hard drive in some cached location the
first time and serves that on future requests.

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