A long-lived project that still receives updates
Shrine is a toolkit for file attachments in Ruby applications. It supports uploading, downloading, processing and deleting IO objects, backed by various storage engines. It uses efficient streaming for low memory usage. Shrine comes with a high-level interface for attaching uploaded files to database records, saving their location and metadata to a database column, and tying them to record's lifecycle. It natively supports background jobs and direct uploads for fully asynchronous user experience.
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
 Dependencies

Development

Runtime

 Project Readme

Shrine logo: a red paperclip

Shrine is a toolkit for handling file attachments in Ruby applications. Some highlights:

If you're curious how it compares to other file attachment libraries, see the Advantages of Shrine. Otherwise, follow along with the Getting Started guide.

Links

Resource URL
Website & Documentation shrinerb.com
Demo code Roda / Rails
Wiki github.com/shrinerb/shrine/wiki
Discussion forum github.com/shrinerb/shrine/discussions
Alternate Discussion forum discourse.shrinerb.com

Setup

Run:

bundle add shrine

Then add config/initializers/shrine.rb which sets up the storage and loads ORM integration:

require "shrine"
require "shrine/storage/file_system"

Shrine.storages = {
  cache: Shrine::Storage::FileSystem.new("public", prefix: "uploads/cache"), # temporary
  store: Shrine::Storage::FileSystem.new("public", prefix: "uploads"),       # permanent
}

Shrine.plugin :activerecord           # loads Active Record integration
Shrine.plugin :cached_attachment_data # enables retaining cached file across form redisplays
Shrine.plugin :restore_cached_data    # extracts metadata for assigned cached files

Next, add the <name>_data column to the table you want to attach files to. For an "image" attachment on a photos table this would be an image_data column:

$ rails generate migration add_image_data_to_photos image_data:text # or :jsonb

If using jsonb consider adding a gin index for fast key-value pair searchability within image_data.

Now create an uploader class (which you can put in app/uploaders) and register the attachment on your model:

class ImageUploader < Shrine
  # plugins and uploading logic
end
class Photo < ActiveRecord::Base
  include ImageUploader::Attachment(:image) # adds an `image` virtual attribute
end

In our views let's now add form fields for our attachment attribute that will allow users to upload files:

<%= form_for @photo do |f| %>
  <%= f.hidden_field :image, value: @photo.cached_image_data, id: nil %>
  <%= f.file_field :image %>
  <%= f.submit %>
<% end %>

When the form is submitted, in your controller you can assign the file from request params to the attachment attribute on the model:

class PhotosController < ApplicationController
  def create
    Photo.create(photo_params) # attaches the uploaded file
    # ...
  end

  private

  def photo_params
    params.require(:photo).permit(:image)
  end
end

Once a file is uploaded and attached to the record, you can retrieve the file URL and display it on the page:

<%= image_tag @photo.image_url %>

See the Getting Started guide for further documentation.

Inspiration

Shrine was heavily inspired by Refile and Roda. From Refile it borrows the idea of "backends" (here named "storages"), attachment interface, and direct uploads. From Roda it borrows the implementation of an extensible plugin system.

Similar libraries

  • Paperclip
  • CarrierWave
  • Dragonfly
  • Refile
  • Active Storage

Contributing

Please refer to the contributing page.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the Shrine project’s codebases, issue trackers, and mailing lists is expected to follow the Shrine code of conduct.

License

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