Getting URL for public assets in Rails model - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a Rails application that uses Paperclip and saves images to S3. When the user uploads an asset without an image, it gets the default image set in the Paperclip setup.
My API serves those assets and has the links to the images in the JSON response (using jbuilder), however I can't seem to return the default image URL, it only returns "missing.png" and I wanted it to return the entire URL to the server with the missing image path attached to it.
I'm setting the default url in the model, and I've tried using ActionView::Helpers::AssetUrlHelper to get the image_url but it never works even though it is working inside the rails console. Any idea on what can I do to solve it?
The JBuilder file:
json.profile_picture_smallest asset.profile_picture.url(:smallest)
json.profile_picture_small asset.profile_picture.url(:small)
json.profile_picture_medium asset.profile_picture.url(:medium)
json.profile_picture_large asset.profile_picture.url(:large)
json.profile_picture_original asset.profile_picture.url(:original)
The part of paperclip that is included in the Model
module Picturable
extend ActiveSupport::Concern
included do
has_attached_file :profile_picture, path: '/images/' + name.downcase.pluralize + '/:style/:basename', default_url: "missing.png",
styles: {
smallest: '50x50>',
small: '100x100>',
medium: '200x200>',
large: '400x400>',
png: ['400x400>',:png]
}, :convert_options => {
smallest: '-trim',
small: '-trim',
medium: '-trim',
large: '-trim',
png: '-trim'
}
# Validate the attached image is image/jpg, image/png, etc
validates_attachment_content_type :profile_picture, :content_type => /\Aimage\/.*\Z/
end
def set_uuid_name
begin
self.profile_picture_file_name = SecureRandom.uuid
end while self.class.find_by(:profile_picture_file_name => self.profile_picture_file_name)
end
end
Paperclip config:
Paperclip::Attachment.default_options[:s3_host_name] = 's3hostname'
Development config:
config.paperclip_defaults = {
:storage => :s3,
:s3_credentials => {
:bucket => 'paperclipdev',
:access_key_id => 'accesskey',
:secret_access_key => 'secretaccesskey'
}
}

Answer 1

I think the way to do this is use the asset helpers in your jbuilder file:
json.profile_picture_smallest asset_url(asset.profile_picture.url(:smallest))
It's worth a mention here that you can also pass a symbol method name to paperclip for the default_url parameter if you want the default url to be dynamic based on the model.