Q1 - What's the current most popular approach (plugin/gem or
otherwise) for sending files / streaming files (e.g. images) back to a
browser?
Q2 - Noting I'm on Dreamhost.com on a shared environment (so don't get
much access to Apache), I was going to stick the images in mysql.
Should keep things simple. Later if the service really gets used or
response times are an issue I could change this approach (store them
in a directory I create in the Rails app, but not under /public I
guess). This should be OK no? Again I'm not sure how much access to
Apache with Dreamhost.com shared platform I would have and whether
there would be a well known more performant option here.
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Apache
Background - So the main page would be referencing these images via a
Rails controller to ensure authentication occurs. So it's the
standard scenario of allowing a user to upload files/images, but when
they download them how to serve this back to them in an efficient
fashion.
Q1 - What's the current most popular approach (plugin/gem or
otherwise) for sending files / streaming files (e.g. images) back to a
browser?
Put them in the public directory. That way Rails' involvement is
minimized.
Q2 - Noting I'm on Dreamhost.com on a shared environment (so don't get
much access to Apache), I was going to stick the images in mysql.
Should keep things simple.
No, actually it will complicate things, or so say people who've done it
this way. Images belong in the filesystem, not the DB.
[...]
Background - So the main page would be referencing these images via a
Rails controller to ensure authentication occurs. So it's the
standard scenario of allowing a user to upload files/images, but when
they download them how to serve this back to them in an efficient
fashion.
Have you bothered to read the recent discussions on this list? There's
always a lot of talk of using Paperclip and send_file for exactly this.