v6.1.0
More at rubyonrails.org: More Ruby on Rails

Active Storage Overview

This guide covers how to attach files to your Active Record models.

After reading this guide, you will know:

1 What is Active Storage?

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.

Using Active Storage, an application can transform image uploads with ImageMagick, generate image representations of non-image uploads like PDFs and videos, and extract metadata from arbitrary files.

2 Setup

Active Storage uses two tables in your application’s database named active_storage_blobs and active_storage_attachments. After creating a new application (or upgrading your application to Rails 5.2), run bin/rails active_storage:install to generate a migration that creates these tables. Use bin/rails db:migrate to run the migration.

active_storage_attachments is a polymorphic join table that stores your model's class name. If your model's class name changes, you will need to run a migration on this table to update the underlying record_type to your model's new class name.

If you are using UUIDs instead of integers as the primary key on your models you will need to change the column type of record_id for the active_storage_attachments table in the generated migration accordingly.

Declare Active Storage services in config/storage.yml. For each service your application uses, provide a name and the requisite configuration. The example below declares three services named local, test, and amazon:

local:
  service: Disk
  root: <%= Rails.root.join("storage") %>

test:
  service: Disk
  root: <%= Rails.root.join("tmp/storage") %>

amazon:
  service: S3
  access_key_id: ""
  secret_access_key: ""
  bucket: ""
  region: "" # e.g. 'us-east-1'

Tell Active Storage which service to use by setting Rails.application.config.active_storage.service. Because each environment will likely use a different service, it is recommended to do this on a per-environment basis. To use the disk service from the previous example in the development environment, you would add the following to config/environments/development.rb:

# Store files locally.
config.active_storage.service = :local

To use the S3 service in production, you add the following to config/environments/production.rb:

# Store files on Amazon S3.
config.active_storage.service = :amazon

To use the test service when testing, you add the following to config/environments/test.rb:

# Store uploaded files on the local file system in a temporary directory.
config.active_storage.service = :test

Continue reading for more information on the built-in service adapters (e.g. Disk and S3) and the configuration they require.

Configuration files that are environment-specific will take precedence: in production, for example, the config/storage/production.yml file (if existent) will take precedence over the config/storage.yml file.

2.1 Disk Service

Declare a Disk service in config/storage.yml:

local:
  service: Disk
  root: <%= Rails.root.join("storage") %>

2.2 S3 Service (Amazon S3 and S3-compatible APIs)

To connect to Amazon S3, declare an S3 service in config/storage.yml:

amazon:
  service: S3
  access_key_id: ""
  secret_access_key: ""
  region: ""
  bucket: ""

Optionally provide client and upload options:

amazon:
  service: S3
  access_key_id: ""
  secret_access_key: ""
  region: ""
  bucket: ""
  http_open_timeout: 0
  http_read_timeout: 0
  retry_limit: 0
  upload: 
    server_side_encryption: "" # 'aws:kms' or 'AES256'

Set sensible client HTTP timeouts and retry limits for your application. In certain failure scenarios, the default AWS client configuration may cause connections to be held for up to several minutes and lead to request queuing.

Add the aws-sdk-s3 gem to your Gemfile:

gem "aws-sdk-s3", require: false

The core features of Active Storage require the following permissions: s3:ListBucket, s3:PutObject, s3:GetObject, and s3:DeleteObject. If you have additional upload options configured such as setting ACLs then additional permissions may be required.

If you want to use environment variables, standard SDK configuration files, profiles, IAM instance profiles or task roles, you can omit the access_key_id, secret_access_key, and region keys in the example above. The S3 Service supports all of the authentication options described in the AWS SDK documentation.

To connect to an S3-compatible object storage API such as DigitalOcean Spaces, provide the endpoint:

digitalocean:
  service: S3
  endpoint: https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com
  access_key_id: ...
  secret_access_key: ...
  # ...and other options

2.3 Microsoft Azure Storage Service

Declare an Azure Storage service in config/storage.yml:

azure:
  service: AzureStorage
  storage_account_name: ""
  storage_access_key: ""
  container: ""

Add the azure-storage-blob gem to your Gemfile:

gem "azure-storage-blob", require: false

2.4 Google Cloud Storage Service

Declare a Google Cloud Storage service in config/storage.yml:

google:
  service: GCS
  credentials: <%= Rails.root.join("path/to/keyfile.json") %>
  project: ""
  bucket: ""

Optionally provide a Hash of credentials instead of a keyfile path:

google:
  service: GCS
  credentials:
    type: "service_account"
    project_id: ""
    private_key_id: <%= Rails.application.credentials.dig(:gcs, :private_key_id) %>
    private_key: <%= Rails.application.credentials.dig(:gcs, :private_key).dump %>
    client_email: ""
    client_id: ""
    auth_uri: "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth"
    token_uri: "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token"
    auth_provider_x509_cert_url: "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs"
    client_x509_cert_url: ""
  project: ""
  bucket: ""

Add the google-cloud-storage gem to your Gemfile:

gem "google-cloud-storage", "~> 1.11", require: false

2.5 Mirror Service

You can keep multiple services in sync by defining a mirror service. A mirror service replicates uploads and deletes across two or more subordinate services.

A mirror service is intended to be used temporarily during a migration between services in production. You can start mirroring to a new service, copy pre-existing files from the old service to the new, then go all-in on the new service.

Mirroring is not atomic. It is possible for an upload to succeed on the primary service and fail on any of the subordinate services. Before going all-in on a new service, verify that all files have been copied.

Define each of the services you'd like to mirror as described above. Reference them by name when defining a mirror service:

s3_west_coast:
  service: S3
  access_key_id: ""
  secret_access_key: ""
  region: ""
  bucket: ""

s3_east_coast:
  service: S3
  access_key_id: ""
  secret_access_key: ""
  region: ""
  bucket: ""

production:
  service: Mirror
  primary: s3_east_coast
  mirrors:
    - s3_west_coast

Although all secondary services receive uploads, downloads are always handled by the primary service.

Mirror services are compatible with direct uploads. New files are directly uploaded to the primary service. When a directly-uploaded file is attached to a record, a background job is enqueued to copy it to the secondary services.

2.6 Public access

By default, Active Storage assumes private access to services. This means generating signed, single-use URLs for blobs. If you'd rather make blobs publicly accessible, specify public: true in your app's config/storage.yml:

gcs: &gcs
  service: GCS
  project: ""

private_gcs:
  <<: *gcs
  credentials: <%= Rails.root.join("path/to/private_keyfile.json") %>
  bucket: ""

public_gcs:
  <<: *gcs
  credentials: <%= Rails.root.join("path/to/public_keyfile.json") %>
  bucket: ""
  public: true

Make sure your buckets are properly configured for public access. See docs on how to enable public read permissions for Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Microsoft Azure storage services.

3 Attaching Files to Records

3.1 has_one_attached

The has_one_attached macro sets up a one-to-one mapping between records and files. Each record can have one file attached to it.

For example, suppose your application has a User model. If you want each user to have an avatar, define the User model like this:

class User < ApplicationRecord
  has_one_attached :avatar
end

You can create a user with an avatar:

<%= form.file_field :avatar %>

class SignupController < ApplicationController
  def create
    user = User.create!(user_params)
    session[:user_id] = user.id
    redirect_to root_path
  end

  private
    def user_params
      params.require(:user).permit(:email_address, :password, :avatar)
    end
end

Call avatar.attach to attach an avatar to an existing user:

user.avatar.attach(params[:avatar])

Call avatar.attached? to determine whether a particular user has an avatar:

user.avatar.attached?

In some cases you might want to override a default service for a specific attachment. You can configure specific services per attachment using the service option:

class User < ApplicationRecord
  has_one_attached :avatar, service: :s3
end

3.2 has_many_attached

The has_many_attached macro sets up a one-to-many relationship between records and files. Each record can have many files attached to it.

For example, suppose your application has a Message model. If you want each message to have many images, define the Message model like this:

class Message < ApplicationRecord
  has_many_attached :images
end

You can create a message with images:

class MessagesController < ApplicationController
  def create
    message = Message.create!(message_params)
    redirect_to message
  end

  private
    def message_params
      params.require(:message).permit(:title, :content, images: [])
    end
end

Call images.attach to add new images to an existing message:

@message.images.attach(params[:images])

Call images.attached? to determine whether a particular message has any images:

@message.images.attached?

Overriding the default service is done the same way as has_one_attached, by using the service option:

class Message < ApplicationRecord
  has_many_attached :images, service: :s3
end

3.3 Attaching File/IO Objects

Sometimes you need to attach a file that doesn’t arrive via an HTTP request. For example, you may want to attach a file you generated on disk or downloaded from a user-submitted URL. You may also want to attach a fixture file in a model test. To do that, provide a Hash containing at least an open IO object and a filename:

@message.image.attach(io: File.open('/path/to/file'), filename: 'file.pdf')

When possible, provide a content type as well. Active Storage attempts to determine a file’s content type from its data. It falls back to the content type you provide if it can’t do that.

@message.image.attach(io: File.open('/path/to/file'), filename: 'file.pdf', content_type: 'application/pdf')

You can bypass the content type inference from the data by passing in identify: false along with the content_type.

@message.image.attach(
  io: File.open('/path/to/file'),
  filename: 'file.pdf',
  content_type: 'application/pdf',
  identify: false
)

If you don’t provide a content type and Active Storage can’t determine the file’s content type automatically, it defaults to application/octet-stream.

4 Removing Files

To remove an attachment from a model, call purge on the attachment. If your application is set up to use Active Job, removal can be done in the background instead by calling purge_later. Purging deletes the blob and the file from the storage service.

# Synchronously destroy the avatar and actual resource files.
user.avatar.purge

# Destroy the associated models and actual resource files async, via Active Job.
user.avatar.purge_later

5 Linking to Files

Generate a permanent URL for the blob that points to the application. Upon access, a redirect to the actual service endpoint is returned. This indirection decouples the service URL from the actual one, and allows, for example, mirroring attachments in different services for high-availability. The redirection has an HTTP expiration of 5 min.

url_for(user.avatar)

To create a download link, use the rails_blob_{path|url} helper. Using this helper allows you to set the disposition.

rails_blob_path(user.avatar, disposition: "attachment")

To prevent XSS attacks, ActiveStorage forces the Content-Disposition header to "attachment" for some kind of files. To change this behaviour see the available configuration options in Configuring Rails Applications.

If you need to create a link from outside of controller/view context (Background jobs, Cronjobs, etc.), you can access the rails_blob_path like this:

Rails.application.routes.url_helpers.rails_blob_path(user.avatar, only_path: true)

6 Downloading Files

Sometimes you need to process a blob after it’s uploaded—for example, to convert it to a different format. Use the attachment's download method to read a blob’s binary data into memory:

binary = user.avatar.download

You might want to download a blob to a file on disk so an external program (e.g. a virus scanner or media transcoder) can operate on it. Use the attachment's open method to download a blob to a tempfile on disk:

message.video.open do |file|
  system '/path/to/virus/scanner', file.path
  # ...
end

It's important to know that the file is not yet available in the after_create callback but in the after_create_commit only.

7 Analyzing Files

Active Storage analyzes files once they've been uploaded by queuing a job in Active Job. Analyzed files will store additional information in the metadata hash, including analyzed: true. You can check whether a blob has been analyzed by calling analyzed? on it.

Image analysis provides width and height attributes. Video analysis provides these, as well as duration, angle, and display_aspect_ratio.

Analysis requires the mini_magick gem. Video analysis also requires the FFmpeg library, which you must include separately.

8 Transforming Images

To enable variants, add the image_processing gem to your Gemfile:

gem 'image_processing'

To create a variation of an image, call variant on the attachment. You can pass any transformation to the method supported by the processor. The default processor for Active Storage is MiniMagick, but you can also use Vips.

When the browser hits the variant URL, Active Storage will lazily transform the original blob into the specified format and redirect to its new service location.

<%= image_tag user.avatar.variant(resize_to_limit: [100, 100]) %>

To switch to the Vips processor, you would add the following to config/application.rb:

# Use Vips for processing variants.
config.active_storage.variant_processor = :vips

9 Previewing Files

Some non-image files can be previewed: that is, they can be presented as images. For example, a video file can be previewed by extracting its first frame. Out of the box, Active Storage supports previewing videos and PDF documents. To create a link to a lazily-generated preview, use the attachment's preview method:

<ul>
  <% @message.files.each do |file| %>
    <li>
      <%= image_tag file.preview(resize_to_limit: [100, 100]) %>
    </li>
  <% end %>
</ul>

Extracting previews requires third-party applications, FFmpeg for video and muPDF for PDFs, and on macOS also XQuartz and Poppler. These libraries are not provided by Rails. You must install them yourself to use the built-in previewers. Before you install and use third-party software, make sure you understand the licensing implications of doing so.

10 Direct Uploads

Active Storage, with its included JavaScript library, supports uploading directly from the client to the cloud.

10.1 Usage

  1. Include activestorage.js in your application's JavaScript bundle.

    Using the asset pipeline:

    //= require activestorage

    Using the npm package:

    import * as ActiveStorage from "@rails/activestorage"
ActiveStorage.start()

  2. Add direct_upload: true to your file_field.

    <%= form.file_field :attachments, multiple: true, direct_upload: true %>

    If you aren't using a FormBuilder, add the data attribute directly:

    <input type=file data-direct-upload-url="<%= rails_direct_uploads_url %>" />

  3. Configure CORS on third-party storage services to allow direct upload requests.

  4. That's it! Uploads begin upon form submission.

10.2 Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) configuration

To make direct uploads to a third-party service work, you’ll need to configure the service to allow cross-origin requests from your app. Consult the CORS documentation for your service:

Take care to allow:

  • All origins from which your app is accessed
  • The PUT request method
  • The following headers:
    • Origin
    • Content-Type
    • Content-MD5
    • Content-Disposition (except for Azure Storage)
    • x-ms-blob-content-disposition (for Azure Storage only)
    • x-ms-blob-type (for Azure Storage only)

No CORS configuration is required for the Disk service since it shares your app’s origin.

10.2.1 Example: S3 CORS configuration
[
  {
    "AllowedHeaders": [
      "*"
    ],
    "AllowedMethods": [
      "PUT"
    ],
    "AllowedOrigins": [
      "https://www.example.com"
    ],
    "ExposeHeaders": [
      "Origin",
      "Content-Type",
      "Content-MD5",
      "Content-Disposition"
    ],
    "MaxAgeSeconds": 3600
  }
]
10.2.2 Example: Google Cloud Storage CORS configuration
[
  {
    "origin": ["https://www.example.com"],
    "method": ["PUT"],
    "responseHeader": ["Origin", "Content-Type", "Content-MD5", "Content-Disposition"],
    "maxAgeSeconds": 3600
  }
]
10.2.3 Example: Azure Storage CORS configuration
<Cors>
  <CorsRule>
    <AllowedOrigins>https://www.example.com</AllowedOrigins>
    <AllowedMethods>PUT</AllowedMethods>
    <AllowedHeaders>Origin, Content-Type, Content-MD5, x-ms-blob-content-disposition, x-ms-blob-type</AllowedHeaders>
    <MaxAgeInSeconds>3600</MaxAgeInSeconds>
  </CorsRule>
<Cors>

10.3 Direct upload JavaScript events

Event name Event target Event data (event.detail) Description
direct-uploads:start <form> None A form containing files for direct upload fields was submitted.
direct-upload:initialize <input> {id, file} Dispatched for every file after form submission.
direct-upload:start <input> {id, file} A direct upload is starting.
direct-upload:before-blob-request <input> {id, file, xhr} Before making a request to your application for direct upload metadata.
direct-upload:before-storage-request <input> {id, file, xhr} Before making a request to store a file.
direct-upload:progress <input> {id, file, progress} As requests to store files progress.
direct-upload:error <input> {id, file, error} An error occurred. An alert will display unless this event is canceled.
direct-upload:end <input> {id, file} A direct upload has ended.
direct-uploads:end <form> None All direct uploads have ended.

10.4 Example

You can use these events to show the progress of an upload.

direct-uploads

To show the uploaded files in a form:

// direct_uploads.js

addEventListener("direct-upload:initialize", event => {
  const { target, detail } = event
  const { id, file } = detail
  target.insertAdjacentHTML("beforebegin", `
    <div id="direct-upload-${id}" class="direct-upload direct-upload--pending">
      <div id="direct-upload-progress-${id}" class="direct-upload__progress" style="width: 0%"></div>
      <span class="direct-upload__filename"></span>
    </div>
  `)
  target.previousElementSibling.querySelector(`.direct-upload__filename`).textContent = file.name
})

addEventListener("direct-upload:start", event => {
  const { id } = event.detail
  const element = document.getElementById(`direct-upload-${id}`)
  element.classList.remove("direct-upload--pending")
})

addEventListener("direct-upload:progress", event => {
  const { id, progress } = event.detail
  const progressElement = document.getElementById(`direct-upload-progress-${id}`)
  progressElement.style.width = `${progress}%`
})

addEventListener("direct-upload:error", event => {
  event.preventDefault()
  const { id, error } = event.detail
  const element = document.getElementById(`direct-upload-${id}`)
  element.classList.add("direct-upload--error")
  element.setAttribute("title", error)
})

addEventListener("direct-upload:end", event => {
  const { id } = event.detail
  const element = document.getElementById(`direct-upload-${id}`)
  element.classList.add("direct-upload--complete")
})

Add styles:

/* direct_uploads.css */

.direct-upload {
  display: inline-block;
  position: relative;
  padding: 2px 4px;
  margin: 0 3px 3px 0;
  border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3);
  border-radius: 3px;
  font-size: 11px;
  line-height: 13px;
}

.direct-upload--pending {
  opacity: 0.6;
}

.direct-upload__progress {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  opacity: 0.2;
  background: #0076ff;
  transition: width 120ms ease-out, opacity 60ms 60ms ease-in;
  transform: translate3d(0, 0, 0);
}

.direct-upload--complete .direct-upload__progress {
  opacity: 0.4;
}

.direct-upload--error {
  border-color: red;
}

input[type=file][data-direct-upload-url][disabled] {
  display: none;
}

10.5 Integrating with Libraries or Frameworks

If you want to use the Direct Upload feature from a JavaScript framework, or you want to integrate custom drag and drop solutions, you can use the DirectUpload class for this purpose. Upon receiving a file from your library of choice, instantiate a DirectUpload and call its create method. Create takes a callback to invoke when the upload completes.

import { DirectUpload } from "@rails/activestorage"

const input = document.querySelector('input[type=file]')

// Bind to file drop - use the ondrop on a parent element or use a
//  library like Dropzone
const onDrop = (event) => {
  event.preventDefault()
  const files = event.dataTransfer.files;
  Array.from(files).forEach(file => uploadFile(file))
}

// Bind to normal file selection
input.addEventListener('change', (event) => {
  Array.from(input.files).forEach(file => uploadFile(file))
  // you might clear the selected files from the input
  input.value = null
})

const uploadFile = (file) => {
  // your form needs the file_field direct_upload: true, which
  //  provides data-direct-upload-url
  const url = input.dataset.directUploadUrl
  const upload = new DirectUpload(file, url)

  upload.create((error, blob) => {
    if (error) {
      // Handle the error
    } else {
      // Add an appropriately-named hidden input to the form with a
      //  value of blob.signed_id so that the blob ids will be
      //  transmitted in the normal upload flow
      const hiddenField = document.createElement('input')
      hiddenField.setAttribute("type", "hidden");
      hiddenField.setAttribute("value", blob.signed_id);
      hiddenField.name = input.name
      document.querySelector('form').appendChild(hiddenField)
    }
  })
}

If you need to track the progress of the file upload, you can pass a third parameter to the DirectUpload constructor. During the upload, DirectUpload will call the object's directUploadWillStoreFileWithXHR method. You can then bind your own progress handler on the XHR.

import { DirectUpload } from "@rails/activestorage"

class Uploader {
  constructor(file, url) {
    this.upload = new DirectUpload(this.file, this.url, this)
  }

  upload(file) {
    this.upload.create((error, blob) => {
      if (error) {
        // Handle the error
      } else {
        // Add an appropriately-named hidden input to the form
        // with a value of blob.signed_id
      }
    })
  }

  directUploadWillStoreFileWithXHR(request) {
    request.upload.addEventListener("progress",
      event => this.directUploadDidProgress(event))
  }

  directUploadDidProgress(event) {
    // Use event.loaded and event.total to update the progress bar
  }
}

11 Discarding Files Stored During System Tests

System tests clean up test data by rolling back a transaction. Because destroy is never called on an object, the attached files are never cleaned up. If you want to clear the files, you can do it in an after_teardown callback. Doing it here ensures that all connections created during the test are complete and you won't receive an error from Active Storage saying it can't find a file.

class ApplicationSystemTestCase < ActionDispatch::SystemTestCase
  driven_by :selenium, using: :chrome, screen_size: [1400, 1400]

  def remove_uploaded_files
    FileUtils.rm_rf("#{Rails.root}/storage_test")
  end

  def after_teardown
    super
    remove_uploaded_files
  end
end

If your system tests verify the deletion of a model with attachments and you're using Active Job, set your test environment to use the inline queue adapter so the purge job is executed immediately rather at an unknown time in the future.

You may also want to use a separate service definition for the test environment so your tests don't delete the files you create during development.

# Use inline job processing to make things happen immediately
config.active_job.queue_adapter = :inline

# Separate file storage in the test environment
config.active_storage.service = :local_test

12 Discarding Files Stored During Integration Tests

Similarly to System Tests, files uploaded during Integration Tests will not be automatically cleaned up. If you want to clear the files, you can do it in an after_teardown callback. Doing it here ensures that all connections created during the test are complete and you won't receive an error from Active Storage saying it can't find a file.

module RemoveUploadedFiles
  def after_teardown
    super
    remove_uploaded_files
  end

  private

  def remove_uploaded_files
    FileUtils.rm_rf(Rails.root.join('tmp', 'storage'))
  end
end

module ActionDispatch
  class IntegrationTest
    prepend RemoveUploadedFiles
  end
end

13 Implementing Support for Other Cloud Services

If you need to support a cloud service other than these, you will need to implement the Service. Each service extends ActiveStorage::Service by implementing the methods necessary to upload and download files to the cloud.

Feedback

You're encouraged to help improve the quality of this guide.

Please contribute if you see any typos or factual errors. To get started, you can read our documentation contributions section.

You may also find incomplete content or stuff that is not up to date. Please do add any missing documentation for master. Make sure to check Edge Guides first to verify if the issues are already fixed or not on the master branch. Check the Ruby on Rails Guides Guidelines for style and conventions.

If for whatever reason you spot something to fix but cannot patch it yourself, please open an issue.

And last but not least, any kind of discussion regarding Ruby on Rails documentation is very welcome on the rubyonrails-docs mailing list.