Question

I am using Paperclip (w/ Amazon s3) on Rails 3. I want to attach a new file to my model without replacing the old file. I don’t want the old file to be accessible, I only want to have it there on s3 as a back up.
Do you know if there is a way of telling paperclip to take care of it, itself?

in post.rb I have:

has_attached_file :sound,
        :storage => :s3,
        :s3_credentials => "....",
        :styles => {:mp3 => {:format => :mp3}},
        :processors => [:sound_processor],
        :s3_host_alias => '....',
        :bucket => '....',
        :path => ":attachment/:id/:style/out.:extension",
        :url => ":s3_alias_url"

and the processor is as follows:

class Paperclip::SoundProcessor < Paperclip::Processor

  def initialize file, options = {}, attachment = nil
    super

    @format = options[:format] || "mp3"
    @current_format = File.extname(@file.path)
    @basename = File.basename(@file.path, @current_format)
  end

  def make
    src = @file
    dst = Tempfile.new([@basename,".#{@format}"])
    dst.binmode

    cmd = "ffmpeg -y -ab 128k -t 600 -i #{File.expand_path(src.path)} #{File.expand_path(dst.path)}"
    Paperclip.log(cmd)
    out = `#{cmd}`
    raise Paperclip::PaperclipError, "processor does not accept the given audio file" unless $?.exitstatus == 0

    dst
  end

end

Answer 1

Here’s what I do. I timestamp the filename before saving it (to prevent another file with the same name overwriting the original), and force paperclip to never delete anything.

before_create :timestamp_filename

def timestamp_filename
  fname = Time.now.to_s(:db).gsub(/[^0-9]/,'') + '_' + sound_file_name
  sound.instance_write(:file_name, fname)
end

# override paperclip's destroy files
# method to always keep them around
def destroy_attached_files
  true
end