ActiveStorage::Preview (original) (raw)
Active Storage Preview
Some non-image blobs can be previewed: that is, they can be presented as images. A video blob can be previewed by extracting its first frame, and a PDF blob can be previewed by extracting its first page.
A previewer extracts a preview image from a blob. Active Storage provides previewers for videos and PDFs. ActiveStorage::Previewer::VideoPreviewer is used for videos whereas ActiveStorage::Previewer::PopplerPDFPreviewer and ActiveStorage::Previewer::MuPDFPreviewer are used for PDFs. Build custom previewers by subclassing ActiveStorage::Previewer and implementing the requisite methods. Consult the ActiveStorage::Previewer documentation for more details on what’s required of previewers.
To choose the previewer for a blob, Active Storage calls accept? on each registered previewer in order. It uses the first previewer for which accept? returns true when given the blob. In a Rails application, add or remove previewers by manipulating Rails.application.config.active_storage.previewers in an initializer:
Rails.application.config.active_storage.previewers
# => [ ActiveStorage::Previewer::PopplerPDFPreviewer, ActiveStorage::Previewer::MuPDFPreviewer, ActiveStorage::Previewer::VideoPreviewer ]
# Add a custom previewer for Microsoft Office documents:
Rails.application.config.active_storage.previewers << DOCXPreviewer
# => [ ActiveStorage::Previewer::PopplerPDFPreviewer, ActiveStorage::Previewer::MuPDFPreviewer, ActiveStorage::Previewer::VideoPreviewer, DOCXPreviewer ]
Outside of a Rails application, modify ActiveStorage.previewers instead.
The built-in previewers rely on third-party system libraries. Specifically, the built-in video previewer requires FFmpeg. Two PDF previewers are provided: one requires Poppler, and the other requires muPDF (version 1.8 or newer). To preview PDFs, install either Poppler or muPDF.
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.
Namespace
Methods
D
I
K
N
P
U
Attributes
Class Public methods
new(blob, variation_or_variation_key)Link
def initialize(blob, variation_or_variation_key) @blob, @variation = blob, ActiveStorage::Variation.wrap(variation_or_variation_key) end
Instance Public methods
download(&block)Link
Downloads the file associated with this preview’s variant. If no block is given, the entire file is read into memory and returned. That’ll use a lot of RAM for very large files. If a block is given, then the download is streamed and yielded in chunks. Raises ActiveStorage::Preview::UnprocessedError if the preview has not been processed yet.
def download(&block) if processed? presentation.download(&block) else raise UnprocessedError end end
image()Link
Returns the blob’s attached preview image.
key()Link
Returns a combination key of the blob and the variation that together identifies a specific variant.
def key if processed? presentation.key else raise UnprocessedError end end
processed()Link
Processes the preview if it has not been processed yet. Returns the receiving ActiveStorage::Preview instance for convenience:
blob.preview(resize_to_limit: [100, 100]).processed.url
Processing a preview generates an image from its blob and attaches the preview image to the blob. Because the preview image is stored with the blob, it is only generated once.
def processed process unless processed? variant.processed if variant? self end
url(**options)Link
Returns the URL of the preview’s variant on the service. Raises ActiveStorage::Preview::UnprocessedError if the preview has not been processed yet.
This method synchronously processes a variant of the preview image, so do not call it in views. Instead, generate a stable URL that redirects to the URL returned by this method.
def url(**options) if processed? presentation.url(**options) else raise UnprocessedError end end