file_column vs. acts_as_attachment

[HH]

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

[Brian Hogan]

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

[subimage interactive]

I've been wondering the same thing lately...

On 8/31/06, HH <li...@lastonepicked.com> wrote:

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

[Ezra Zygmuntowicz]

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

[Brian Hogan]

@Ezra:

What really stuck out that made you switch?

[Caspar]

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

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

[Timothy Johnson]

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

[Charlie Bowman]

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

[Ezra Zygmuntowicz]

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 Olson 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

[Nic Werner]

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 Zygmuntowicz <ezmo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>

--
- Nic

[Timothy Johnson]

>
> 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 Johnson

[Nic Werner]

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 Johnson <rails-mai...@andreas-s.net> wrote:
>
> >

--
- Nic

[Brian Hogan]

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.

[Brian Hogan]

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!

[Rick Olson]

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

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 Olson
http://weblog.techno-weenie.net
http://mephistoblog.com

[Daniel N]

On 9/1/06, Brian Hogan <bph...@gmail.com> 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. 

[Peter De Berdt]

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

[Alex Wayne]

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.

[namxam]

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