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👩‍💻

Pushing the Boundaries with ActiveStorage

Andrea Fomera - Rails World 2024

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Today we’ll cover

  • Using ActiveStorage with third-party services

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Today we’ll cover

  • Using ActiveStorage with third-party services
  • Building a comprehensive Media Library

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Hello, I’m Andrea Fomera 👋

  • Pronouns: she/her

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Hello, I’m Andrea Fomera 👋

  • Pronouns: she/her
  • Senior Software Engineer at Soundstripe

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Hello, I’m Andrea Fomera 👋

  • Pronouns: she/her
  • Senior Software Engineer at Soundstripe
  • https://afomera.dev

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Hello, I’m Andrea Fomera 👋

  • Pronouns: she/her
  • Senior Software Engineer at Soundstripe
  • https://afomera.dev
  • @afomera everywhere that matters

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Before we get started

  • My slides move fast
  • There will be a link to the code and slides at the end

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Everything written for this talk

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Let’s talk about ActiveStorage

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“Active Storage facilitates uploading files to a cloud storage service like Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Microsoft Azure Storage and attaching those files to Active Record objects. It comes with a local disk-based service for development and testing and supports mirroring files to subordinate services for backups and migrations.”

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ActiveStorage Simplifies File Uploads

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ActiveStorage’s Core Tables

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active_storage_blobs

Attribute

Type

key

String

filename

String

metadata

Text

service_name

String

byte_size

BigInt

checksum

String

created_at

DateTime

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active_storage_attachments

Attribute

Type

name

String

record_type

String

record_id

BigInt

created_at

DateTime

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active_storage_variant_records

Attribute

Type

blob_id

BigInt

variation_digest

String

* used only if you have track_variants enabled

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How’s this work in practice?

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How’s this work in practice?

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Can we be more efficient?

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Media Library to the Rescue

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Building Custom Services with ActiveStorage

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Create your own Service

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Requirements for your own Service

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Let’s implement Wistia as a Service

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Handling Uploads

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LET’S BREAK ALL THE RULES.

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Let’s… push the boundaries

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wistia:hashed_id:file_name

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Introducing ActiveStorage::Providers

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What is a provider?

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Developer API

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Developer API

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Developer API

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Implementation

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providers_for class method

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Recap of ActiveStorage Providers

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You can define multiple providers…

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Product Owners introduce new Requirements

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Product Owners introduce new Requirements

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Let’s extend add_provider_hooks

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Frontend for Pexels

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Demo Video 1

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How do we implement this?

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1. Custom Form Builder

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2. Single Image Uploader View

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2. Single Image Uploader View

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3. PexelsController

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4. Displaying & Selecting an Image

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pexels:photoURL

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Some Thoughts

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Providers are Reusable!

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Building a Media Library

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First a demo video

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This code may not be production ready.

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ActiveStorage Schema (revisited!)

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ActiveStorage Schema (revisited!)

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Adding a User Reference

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Adding a User Reference

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Minimum Viable Product approach

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Minimum Viable Product approach

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Benefits of this approach

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Benefits of this approach

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Querying a User’s blobs

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Leverage what Rails provides

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It’s Expandable

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Selecting from the Media Library just uses the existing Blob

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Using ActiveStorage at Scale

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Searching / Filtering

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Extending ActiveStorage::Blob

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Well Known Blobs

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Preventing Deletion on Staging / QA

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(Override the delete method and include the Blob when on staging)

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Things to know

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Set Current.user in Background Jobs / Rake Tasks

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Enable providers on the has_one_attached association

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Takeaways

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Think outside the boundaries

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Custom Services can allow you to do unique and new things

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Thank you for your time

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Slides / Code

Slides / Speaking Notes

https://afomera.dev/speaking

Code with working demos:

https://github.com/afomera/rails-world-2024

Find me online:

https://twitter.com/afomera