Rendering Paperclip URL's using JBUILDER - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am building an API with Ruby on Rails.
I have Users that have avatars implemented using paperclip.
I am trying to access my paperclip URL's in my JSON output and it just crashed my heroku instance. This works perfectly locally.
Snippet of My User Model
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_attached_file :avatar, styles: { large: "600x600#", medium: "300x300#", thumb: "100x100#" }, default_url: "https://s3.amazonaws.com/whiztutor-marketing/photos/Profile300.png"
validates_attachment_content_type :avatar, content_type: /\Aimage\/.*\Z/
end
Snippet of My Jbuilder for my user
json.cache! #user do
json.id #user.id
json.type #user.type
json.f_name #user.f_name
json.about #user.about
json.email #user.email
json.avatar_url #user.avatar.url(:medium)
json.referral_code #user.referral_code
json.education_level #user.education_level
json.photo_url #user.avatar.to_json
json.education_details #user.education_details.all
json.all_subjects #user.subjects.all
json.all_times #user.all_available_times.each do |time|
json.day time.schedule.to_s
json.time_block time.time_as_string
json.next_occurrence time.schedule.next_occurrence(Time.now)
end
end
I tried wrapping this into a method as found on this question and it breaks the server the exact same way. I can even run console and access these URL's directly with the server. Something with JBUILDER and PAPERCLIP just don't mix and I can't seem to get to the bottom of it. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Finally diagnosed this issue after several hours of research.
The issue is with the "json.cache! #user do" - Specifically the .cache! - I wanted to save a few server cycles and speed things up so this is how I implemented things at first.
Regardless, when I updated my JBUILDER code to the following I am no longer getting 500 server errors.
Snippet of My working Jbuilder for my user
json.id #user.id
json.type #user.type
json.f_name #user.f_name
json.about #user.about
json.email #user.email
json.small_photo #user.profile_url_small
json.medium_photo #user.profile_url_medium
json.referral_code #user.referral_code
json.education_level #user.education_level
json.education_details #user.education_details.all
json.all_subjects #user.subjects.all
json.all_times #user.all_available_times.each do |time|
json.day time.schedule.to_s
json.time_block time.time_as_string
json.next_occurrence time.schedule.next_occurrence(Time.now)
end

Answer 2

It's hard to say what the problem might be without knowing the error, but these things look suspicious or just wrong:
json.avatar_url #user.avatar.url(:medium)
json.photo_url #user.avatar.to_json
The second one is going to give you extra quotes you probably don't want. And why have both?
Also here:
json.all_times #user.all_available_times.each do |time|
json.day time.schedule.to_s
json.time_block time.time_as_string
json.next_occurrence time.schedule.next_occurrence(Time.now)
end
I think you want this:
json.all_times #user.all_available_times do |time|
json.day time.schedule.to_s
json.time_block time.time_as_string
json.next_occurrence time.schedule.next_occurrence(Time.now)
end

Answer 3

You can try this to get the url in json response, it works for me placed this method in your model.
def avatar_url
avatar.url(:medium)
end
And call this method from controller,by overriding to_json()
render :json => #friends.to_json(:methods => [:avatar_url])