mockra

Uploading videos to a Rails application using Paperclip is almost identical to image uploads. Here’s a quick example of how to get started using Paperclip in your project.

The first thing you’ll need to do is add the library to your Gemfile.

gem "paperclip"

You’ll then want to run bundle install before continuing. The next step in our example is adding migrations for the record you want to store a video for. In our case, we’re going to have a Video record that stores our file.

Our migrations will look like:

  class CreateVideos < ActiveRecord::Migration
    def change
      create_table :videos do |t|
        t.string :title
        t.attachment :file

        t.timestamps
      end
    end
  end

We’ll then want to add the appropriate logic to our model. In this case, we’re going to use the file column for storing our attachment. We’re also going to skip validating the content type.

  class Video < ActiveRecord::Base
     has_attached_file :file
     do_not_validate_attachment_file_type :file
  end

You’ll also want to add a file_field to the form you’re using to create a Video record. Here’s an example of what that looks like using simple_form and slim.

  = simple_form_for @video do |f|
    = f.input :title
    = f.file_field :file
    = f.submit

When we want to display the video on a page, we can use the following code:

  video width="100%" controls=""
    source src="#{@video.file.url}"

We’ll most likely want to store our videos on S3, which is easy to do using Paperclip. The first thing we’ll need to do is add the aws-sdk library to our Gemfile.

gem 'aws-sdk'

You may want to only include this gem in your production environment. We’ll then want to include some configuration in config/environments/production.rb.

  config.paperclip_defaults = {
    storage: :s3,
    s3_credentials: {
      bucket: 'your-bucket-name'
    }
  }

You’ll also need to add the config/aws.yml file. This is where you’ll put your amazon keys.

  production:
    access_key_id: your-access-key
    secret_access_key: your-secret-key

Once you’ve finished setting up AWS for your project, your video uploads will be ready to go!