Question

I followed this nice article
http://www.lunatech-research.com/playframework-file-upload-blob

and have a perfectly working image upload solution

My questions is, if the user doesn’t select any image, how do I assign a default image during save (probably stored in the server)?


if (!user.photo)
user.photo= ?;
user.save();


The one-hack that I can think of is upload the default image and see which UID “Play” stores in the /tmp directory and assign that above. Is there an elegant named* solution to this?

• when I say named, I mean I want the code to look like (which means I know what I’m doing and I can also write elegant automated code if there are more than one picture)


user.photo= "images/default/male.jpg"


rather than (which means I’m just hacking and I can’t extend it elegantly for a list of pictures)


user.photo= "c0109891-8c9f-4b8e-a533-62341e713a21"


Thanks in advance

Answer 1

The approach I have always taken is to not change the model for empty images, but instead do something in the view to show a default image, if the image does not exist. This I think is a better approach because your are corrupting your model for display purposes, which is bad practice (as you may want to be able to see all those who have not selected an image, for example).

To achieve this, in your view you can simply use the exists() method on the Blob field. The code would look like

#{if user.photo.exists()}
  <img src="@{userPhoto(user.id)}">
#{/if}
#{else}
  <img src="@{'public/images/defaultUserImage.jpg'}">
#{/else}

I have assumed in the above code that you are rendering the image using the action userPhoto as described in the Lunatech article.