Active Storage DB

An Active Storage service upload/download plugin that stores files in a PostgreSQL or MySQL database. Experimental support also for MSSQL and SQLite.

Main features:

• attachment data stored in a binary field (or blob);
• all service methods implemented;
• supports Rails 6 and 7.

Useful also with platforms like Heroku (due to their ephemeral file system).

Installation

• Setup Active Storage in your Rails application
• Add to your Gemfile gem 'active_storage_db' (and execute: bundle)
• Install the gem migrations: bin/rails active_storage_db:install:migrations (and execute: bin/rails db:migrate)
• Add to your config/routes.rb: mount ActiveStorageDB::Engine => '/active_storage_db'
• Change Active Storage service in config/environments/development.rb to: config.active_storage.service = :db
• Add to config/storage.yml:

db:
  service: DB

Customizations

To setup a separate database connection for the ActiveStorageDB migrations and files data:

1. Add a different database configuration per environment to config/database.yml, e.g:

attachments:
  database: attachments
  migrations_paths: config/attachments_migrate
  # other connection details ...

2. Extend the ActiveStorage base record class providing the connects_to options (updating config/application.rb / using an initializer for ActiveStorageDB / overriding the base model like in the Rails guide):

# e.g. app/overrides/models/active_storage_db/application_record_override.rb
ActiveStorageDB::ApplicationRecord.class_eval do
  connects_to database: { reading: :attachments, writing: :attachments }
end

3. Move the ActiveStorageDB migrations to the specified migrations path
4. Execute the rails db:migrate task

Misc

Some utility tasks are available:

# list attachments ordered by blob id desc (with limit 100):
bin/rails 'asdb:list'
# search attachments by filename (or part of it)
bin/rails 'asdb:search[some_filename]'
# download attachment by blob id (retrieved with list or search tasks) - the second argument is the destination:
bin/rails 'asdb:download[123,/tmp]'

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Development

• Author: Mattia Roccoberton
• Inspired by activestorage-database-service project

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.