Question

I’m using Paperclip / S3 for file uploading. I upload text-like files (not .txt, but they are essentially a .txt). In a show controller, I want to be able to get the contents of the uploaded file, but don’t see contents as one of its attributes. What can I do here?

attachment_file_name: "test.md", attachment_content_type: "application/octet-stream", attachment_file_size: 58, attachment_updated_at: "2011-06-22 01:01:40"

PS – Seems like all the Paperclip tutorials are about images, not text files.

Answer 1

Here’s how I access the raw contents of my attachment:

class Document

  has_attached_file :revision

  def revision_contents
    revision.copy_to_local_file.read
  end

end

Please note, I’ve omitted my paperclip configuration options and any sort of error handling.