Andrea Fomera - Pushing the boundaries with ActiveStorage - Rails World 2024

ActiveStorage can be extended beyond traditional cloud storage providers to integrate with third-party services like Wistia and Pexels

Custom providers can be implemented by:

• Inheriting from ActiveStorageService
• Implementing key methods: upload, delete, download, download_chunk, and public
• Adding provider hooks to handle different file sources
• Using the providers keyword argument to specify available providers

Media library functionality can be added by:

• Adding a user_id column to active_storage_attachments
• Creating scopes for filtering and searching blobs
• Implementing file name search functionality
• Building a UI for users to manage their uploads

Tracking user uploads requires:

• Adding a reference to users in the active_storage_attachments table
• Including concerns to automatically set user associations
• Implementing proper scoping for user-specific queries

Integration with third-party services:

• Wistia for video hosting
• Pexels for stock images
• Custom handling of file uploads through service-specific APIs
• Parsing and storing service-specific metadata

Performance considerations:

• Avoiding duplicate blob creation for identical files
• Handling deletions through background jobs
• Managing file variations and thumbnails efficiently
• Implementing proper scoping for large file collections

Security considerations:

• Using expiring tokens for authentication
• Implementing proper access controls
• Managing public vs private file access
• Securing API integrations