Question

I was wondering there was a way to specify a different image for the one to be processed by paperclip?

So instead of the user uploading an image, an image url would be used instead or an exsiting different image on your server thought could just be pointed to?

Cheers.

Edit:
Just to be clear, what I’m looking for is, when an image is uploaded, processed, moved to a folder and attached to a folder. That base image is not uploaded via a form but instead is fetched from a URL and them processed, moved etc 

Answer 1

Here’s a method to use a RemoteFile instead of an uploaded file… Check out the blog post for how to create a RemoteFile, which is a subclass of TempFile

#console
remote_file = RemoteFile.new("http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif")
remote_file.original_filename #=> logo.gif
remote_file.content_type #= image/gif

#controller
def import
  #...snip
  @imported_user.images.create(:file => RemoteFile.new( url_to_image ))
  #...snip
end

http://coryodaniel.com/index.php/2010/03/05/attaching-local-or-remote-files-to-paperclip-and-milton-models-in-rails-mocking-content_type-and-original_filename-in-a-tempfile/