Paperclip on S3 is changing file extensions from a url - ruby-on-rails

Question

I wrote a rake task that downloads an image from wikipedia given a celebrity name, but for some reason when storing on S3 the file extension is either being dropped or changed to .txt
The file otherwise is correct.
Any ideas?
From my celeb model:
has_attached_file :pic,
:styles => { :medium => "300x300>", :thumb => "100x100>" },
:default_style => :medium,
:storage => :s3,
:s3_credentials => "#{Rails.root}/config/s3.yml",
:path => "/:style/:img_name.:extension"
From my rake task:
desc "Update celeb pics from wiki"
task :update_celeb_pics => [:environment] do
include ApplicationHelper
Celeb.all.each do |celeb|
if !celeb.name.start_with?("(")
puts celeb.name
celeb.pic = open(getImage(celeb.name))
celeb.save
end
end
end
the getImage method is a helper that returns a string
require 'open-uri'
require 'uri'
module ApplicationHelper
def getInfo(name)
Nokogiri::XML(open(URI.escape("http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=opensearch&search=#{name}&limit=1&namespace=0&format=xml")))
end
def nokoPage(name)
Nokogiri::XML(open(getURL(name)))
end
def getImage(name)
"http:" + nokoPage(name).css("table img")[0].attribute("src").value if !nokoPage(name).css("table img").empty?
end
def getDescription(name)
getInfo(name).css("Description").text
end
def getURL(name)
getInfo(name).css("Url").text
end
def getBday(name)
bday = nokoPage(name).css("span.bday")
return Date.parse(bday[0].text) if !bday.empty?
return Date.today
end
def getDday(name)
dday = nokoPage(name).css("span.dday")
return Date.parse(dday[0].text) if !dday.empty?
end
end

Answer 1

This is because
self.pic = open("http://something.com/bla/image.png")
is not the best solution here. Just yesterday, i got a Pull Request merged into Paperclip that lets you do this
self.pic = URI.parse(getImage(name))
This will ensure that your pic's content type matches the downloaded file, pic's filename is set to the name of the file downloaded.
The reason you get txt extension is because open returns a StringIO object which infact names the filename as "stringio.txt". Your filename is probably changed by the s3 code but the extension remains as '.txt'
I suggest you link your Gemfile to paperclip's github repo, run bundle and try again.
Cheers,
Aditya