Sneaky Abstractions

You can control which path the files will be written to by setting the save_path attribute on the model class:

class UploadedFile < ActiveRecord::Base

  acts_as_file #Must come first

  self.save_path = File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'public', 'files')
  self.read_path = 'files'

end

If you want to let people get access to the files through the browser (i.e. you save them in /public), remember to set the read_path as well. The url method provides a path that can be presented to the browser:

<%= link_to 'Download file', file.url %>

If you don’t set these attributes in your model class, they will default to public/uploads.

Instance-specific paths

The model instances also have attributes named save_path and read_path. These are by default a copy of the same attributes on the class itself, but can be overridden:

def create
  upload = UploadedFile.new(params[:uploaded_file])
  upload.save_path = File.join('some', 'other', 'path')
  upload.save
end

I’m not sure how useful this is, and I recommend to use the path attribute instead if you want to customise each instance’s path:

class UploadedFile < ActiveRecord::Base

  belongs_to :user

  acts_as_file

  self.save_path = File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'public', 'files')
  self.read_path = 'files'

  #The file will now be saved in
  #"public/files/#{user_id}/"
  def path
    user_id
  end

end