RubyOnRails

[Ruby On Rails] Implementing Image Uploads

What you can learn from this article:

How to integrate Active Storage and Cloudinary into your Ruby on Rails application for seamless image uploads and management.

Tools in this article:

Active Storage
Cloudinary

Background:

Active Storage is a built-in Rails feature that allows you to manage file uploads and associate them with your models. Cloudinary is a powerful cloud-based service designed for managing media assets, such as images and videos. It offers several advantages for developers, especially when working with platforms like Heroku, where the file system is ephemeral.

1. Setting Up Cloudinary

Sign Up

First, you have to sign up for Cloudinary and get your Cloudinary key.
Introduce the dotenv-rails gem for managing sensitive data.
Instructions to create a .env file, add it to .gitignore, and store the Cloudinary URL.

Install Cloudinary Gem

# Gemfile
gem "cloudinary"

# terminal
bundle install

Secure API Keys


# Gemfile
gem "dotenv-rails", groups: [:development, :test]

💡

Why do we need dotenv-rails ?
dotenv-rails is a Ruby Gem designed to manage environment variables in your application. By default, Rails does not automatically load the contents of a .env file. This gem helps by reading the variables from the .env file and automatically loading them into your application’s environment. This allows your code to access these variables using the ENV object.

Instructions to create a .env file, add it to .gitignore, and store the Cloudinary URL.

touch .env
echo '.env*' >> .gitignore
# .env
CLOUDINARY_URL=cloudinary://your_key:your_secret@your_cloud_name

2. Active Storage Setup

Install and Configure Active Storage

# terminal
rails active_storage:install
rails db:migrate

💡

How can we check if active storage command is run well?
This command generates the necessary migration files to set up Active Storage in your Rails application.
The generated migration creates two database tables:
active_storage_blobs: Stores metadata about each uploaded file, such as filename, content type, and byte size.
active_storage_attachments: Associates the uploaded files (blobs) with specific models.

Configure Cloudinary as the Active Storage Service

# config/storage.yml
cloudinary:
  service: Cloudinary
  folder: <%= Rails.env %>

Update the development environment configuration:

# config/environments/development.rb
config.active_storage.service = :cloudinary

3. Integrating Image Uploads

Model Setup

Add an attachment to the model:


class Article < ApplicationRecord
  has_one_attached :photo
end

Form for Image Upload

Use simple_form to create a file upload field:


<%= simple_form_for(@article) do |f| %>
  <%= f.input :title %>
  <%= f.input :body %>
  <%= f.input :photo, as: :file %>
  <%= f.submit %>
<% end %>

Permitting the Photo in the Controller


def article_params
  params.require(:article).permit(:title, :body, :photo)
end

4. Displaying Images in Views

Using Images as Backgrounds

erb
CopyEdit
<div style="background-image: url('<%= cl_image_path(@article.photo.key, height: 300, crop: :fill) %>')">
  Article Title
</div>

Show a Single Image

erb
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<%= cl_image_tag @article.photo.key, height: 300, width: 400, crop: :fill %>

5. Conclusion

Recap what was covered: setting up Cloudinary, Active Storage, and implementing image uploads.