ruby - Rails Paperclip how to delete attachment?

Question

I am using Paperclip (w/ Amazon s3) on Rails 3. I want to delete an existing attachment without replacing it using an update action.

I've only found one example of this here and could not get that to work, it just wouldn't delete and there was nothing in the logs to say why. I wanted to do something like this on the form:

<%- unless @page.new_record? || !@page.image? -%>
    <%= f.check_box :image_delete, :label => 'Delete Image' %>
<%- end -%>

(page is the name of the model, image is the attribute name which holds the attachment)

But how do I detect that checkbox and more importantly, how do I delete the image? I appreciate any help!

Answer 1

First off, when you create a check_box in a form_for (which it looks like you are), then the form should by default send :image_delete as "1" if checked and "0" if unchecked. The method declaration looks like this:

def check_box(method, options = {}, checked_value = "1", unchecked_value = "0")

Which shows that you can assign other values if you want to, but that is of course optional.

Secondly, the call to manually delete an attachment without deleting the model instance to which it is attached to is:

@page.image.destroy #Will remove the attachment and save the model
@page.image.clear #Will queue the attachment to be deleted

And to accomplish your way of deleting the images through a checkbox, perhaps add something like this to your Page model:

class Page < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_attached_file :image

  before_save :destroy_image?

  def image_delete
    @image_delete ||= "0"
  end

  def image_delete=(value)
    @image_delete = value
  end

private
  def destroy_image?
    self.image.clear if @image_delete == "1"
  end
end

This way, when you create your form and add the :image_delete checkbox, it will load the default value "0" from the User instance. And if that field is checked then the controller will update the image_delete to "1" and when the User is saved, it will check if the image is to be deleted.