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Ruby on rails active storage custom key or path

rails , active storage , ruby on rails , ror , aws , s3 
image_file = params[:image]
user.profile_pic.attach(
io:  File.open(image_file),
filename:  "#{image_file.original_filename}",
key:  "images/#{user.id}/#{image_file.original_filename}",
)
user.save

Okay so what it does actually, first we get the uploaded file from params and then we attach the image with model_object.attach method You can read more about it here and then just call the save method.

Basic idea is we have to treat images or files separately if we want to use custom key, Otherwise it will generate keys like this: pv8xs3kdz4aohenj9znjgrhpgty8, zem3wx1hmiyh9q4ahyuav1ooj4j9 which is definitely worse than these : images/420/my_pic.jpg , images/420/oYUcPwegJppnAK4UJmv52e3xpNXf

In the long run when we want to migrate/remove our data, we can do rm -rf images/ on the other hand if we use auto generated keys we need to figure out which one are images or videos or documents etc.

Since auto generated keys doesn’t have extensions. We can’t really check them without opening the files, and not to mention that we also don’t have directories (which is essentially just keys separated by backslashes).

But there’s one issue this approach if we use original_filename in the key like this:

image_file = params[:image]
user.profile_pic.attach(
io:  File.open(image_file),
filename:  "#{image_file.original_filename}",
key:  "images/#{user.id}/#{image_file.original_filename}",
########################## Here^
)
The issue we need to face is Duplicate Key Error which will be caused if user tries to upload a image with same name. so let’s look what is it & how to deal with it? #

Error #

ActiveRecord::RecordNotUnique (PG::UniqueViolation: ERROR:  duplicate key value violates unique constraint "index_active_storage_blobs_on_key"
DETAIL:  Key (key)=(user/420/profile_pic.jpg) already exists.
)
The deal #
require  'securerandom'
# important^

class UsersController < ApplicationController
	def create
		image_file = params[:image]
		user.profile_pic.attach(
		io:  File.open(image_file),
		filename:  "#{image_file.original_filename}",
		key:  "images/#{user.id}/#{SecureRandom.base58(28)}",
		########################## Use This^
		user.save
	end
end
)

Explanation: we import the the secure random module with require 'securerandom' you can read more about it here PS: it generates secure and also random strings/numbers/hex/bytes etc. this module is also used by rails active storage evidence here and here also i checked both keys one(auto-gen by rails) by one(our patch above) both have same length (28 chars)

just so that we don’t have to worry about potential security issues introduced by our own patches.

Anyways that’s it for this one! if you want to support me! just me hit up! via here

Thanks for reading :) #