Tracking Rails

Just short tip - don't try to load JSON content from external source (which can be missformated) this way: instead try and use tools, that comes with Rails:

Loading JSON content in Rails app

Recently I was wondering if it's really easy to create own processor / converter for CarrierWave. Well, the answer is YES. We've needed video converting utility in our app, that would output given video file in mp4 / webm format (suitable for both flash and HTML5 video players). Recently I also found new gem called voyeur - a nice ffmpeg wrapper (needs to be added in your Gemfile).
Custom processor will then look like this (put this in lib/carrierwave_processing/ dir): Usign this in uploader is very easy. But remember to define custom filename for version - encoded file will have different extension I also have custom initializer, that automagically loads all processors: And that's it - from this moment on your app will be able to convert uploaded video files to "displayable" format.
I hope that above solution will save you some time.

Video encoding processor for CarrierWave

Lately I’ve switched upload handler gem from paperclip into carrierwave. Mostly because I wanted to try something else. But as I found out, making carrierwave behave as I expect it to is much easier. But that could be subject for different post. Anyway - while configuring uploader to my expectations, I’ve found out, that there is no pre-build way to define directory partitioning (for performance reasons it good to have limited number of files inside a directory). Luckily this can be done in very easy way - we just have to define our own method responsible for partition generation. Sample below make three partitions based on id, ie. 001/234/567/ for id=1234567

# encoding: utf-8
class PictureUploader < CarrierWave::Uploader::Base
  storage :file
  after :remove, :delete_empty_upstream_dirs

  def store_dir
    "uploads/#{model.class.to_s.underscore}/#{mounted_as}/#{get_last_dir_part(model.id)}"
  end
  
  ## define how to partition directory
  def get_last_dir_part(modelid)
    p = modelid.to_s.rjust(9, '0')
    "#{p[0,3]}/#{p[3,3]}/#{p[6,3]}"
  end

  ## TAKEN FROM GITHUB
  ## https://github.com/jnicklas/carrierwave/wiki/How-to%3A-Make-a-fast-lookup-able-storage-directory-structure
  def delete_empty_upstream_dirs
    path = ::File.expand_path(store_dir, root)
    Dir.delete(path) # fails if path not empty dir
  rescue SystemCallError
    true # nothing, the dir is not empty
  end

end

Directory partitioning in Carrierwave

Sometimes (well, let's be honest - this is completelly not a common situation) you want to send confirmation mails manually. Ie. after completing two step registration process - in first step user is created, on second step he fill rest of required data and AFTER that he receives confirmation mail. Normally, for confirmable user models, confirmation mail would be send just after completing step one. How to change this? Well, very easy. Just override

send_confirmation_instructions

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  ## DEVISE
  devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable, :confirmable,
         :recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable

  ## ACCESSIBLE
  attr_accessible :email, :password, :password_confirmation, :remember_me

  def send_confirmation_instructions(send=false)
    generate_confirmation_token! if self.confirmation_token.nil?
    ::Devise.mailer.confirmation_instructions(self).deliver if send
  end
end

  def send_confirmation_instructions
    generate_confirmation_token! if self.confirmation_token.nil?
    ::Devise.mailer.delay.confirmation_instructions(self)
  end

Devise - send confirmation mail manually (or delay them)

Today, after upgrading app to rails 3.1.1 (from 3.0) I've noticed, that for some reason sass-rails's helper

image-path()

url('/assets/image.png')

url('/images/image.png')

rc1

gem 'sass-rails', "~> 3.1.5.rc.1"

tmp/cache/

Upgrading to Rails 3.1.1 and problems with asset pipeline