AmazonAvatar¶ ↑

Upload avatars to amazonS3 on a User (or other) model. Simple and opinionated.

• rdoc is at: rdoc.info/projects/scottmotte/amazonavatar

• I’m using it with merb and mongomapper.

• Does resizing using minimagick

• Uploads the images to your s3 account at / avatars / user_id / [original.png,thumb.png,mini.png]

• Resizes a thumb to 48x48, and mini to 24x24. I told you it was opinionated.

• right_aws

• mini_magick

You must have ImageMagick installed.

On leopard

sudo port install tiff -macosx  #disables the linkage with Apple's open gl
sudo port install ImageMagick

On ubuntu

sudo apt-get install build-essential libmagickcore-dev imagemagick libpcre3 libfcgi-dev libfcgi0ldbl libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev -y

On your computer

gem sources -a http://gems.github.com
sudo gem install scottmotte-amazonavatar

Or for bundling

dependency 'scottmotte-amazonavatar', :require_as => 'amazonavatar'

Tell AmazonAvatar your S3 information.

AmazonAvatar.access_key_id = "your_access_key_id"
AmazonAvatar.secret_access_key = "your_secret_access_key"
AmazonAvatar.bucket_name = "yourdatabase_development"
# I put these in init.rb in the after_app_loads block for Merb. Probably put them in your environment.rb file for Rails.

In user.rb model

class User
  include AmazonAvatar::Uploader
  ...
end

In your users.rb controller put use the put_avatar instance method. @user.put_avatar.

def update_avatar(avatar)
  @user = @current_user
  raise NotFound unless @user
  if @user.put_avatar(avatar)
    redirect resource(@user, :edit),  :message => {:notice => "Avatar was updated"}
  else
    redirect resource(@user, :edit),  :message => {:error => "Avatar failed to be uploaded"}
  end
end

In global_helpers.rb

module Merb
  module GlobalHelpers
    include AmazonAvatar::Helpers
    ...
  end
end

This will give you the avatar_path helper which you can use with rails’, sinatra’s, merb’s, etc’s image_tag helper. Just pass in the id of the user to render his avatar.

Also, you should add a default avatar to each user when they signup. The Paperclip gem does this by pointing to the missing.png avatar by storing the path to the avatar in the user table. This simple gem does not store the path in the database. What’s the point. Instead you have to generate the default thumb for each user. There’s an instance method for this.

@user.generate_default_avatar

You can use it like so:

def create(user)
  # session.abandon!
  @user = User.new(user)
  if @user.save
      @user.generate_default_avatar
      send_mail(UserMailer, :signup, { :from => AppConfig.site.email, :to => @user.email, :subject => "Twinstang welcome" }, { :user => @user })
    redirect '/login', :message => {:notice => "Signup successful. Log in."}
  else
    message[:error] = "Signup failed"
    render :new
  end
end

Better yet wrap it in a run_later method in merb or put it in a background job in rails.

...
if @user.save
  run_later do
    @user.generate_default_avatar
    send_mail(UserMailer, :signup, { :from => AppConfig.site.email, :to => @user.email, :subject => "Twinstang welcome" }, { :user => @user })
  end
end
...

AmazonAvatar.access_key_id = AppConfig.s3.access_key_id # set your key AmazonAvatar.secret_access_key = AppConfig.s3.secret_access_key # set your secret AmazonAvatar.bucket_name = AppConfig.s3.bucket # set the bucket @user.put_avatar(avatar) # where avatar is the file_field value @user.generate_default_avatar # for generating the default avatar from amazonavatar/default.png