Question

I have a model Book that has n screenshots.

Each screenshot is an image.

I would like to use a image plugin (e.g. paperclip)

Can I store a paperclip image in an array and serialize?

Is there a better way?

Thanks

Answer 1

You should probably create a table and model for each Screenshot and then set up a has_many relationship from Book to Screenshot, and a belongs_to from Screenshot to Book.

Then Screenshot would use the paperclip plugin to handle the attachment in whatever way you like, though I recommend storing it either on the filesystem or on something like Amazon’s S3, both of which the plugin should help you do. Whatever you do, don’t store them in the database as it’s horribly inefficient and doesn’t let you take advantage of fast file servers like Apache, Nginx, or S3.