Ectophile

Ectophile is an extension for Ecto models to instantly support file uploads.

Usage

Ectophile provides an attachment_fields/2 macro for your model which is used like:

defmodule MyApp.User do
  use Ectophile  #=> Note that this needs to be used before MyApp.Web so that the callbacks will work
  use MyApp.Web, :model

  schema "users" do
    field :email, :string

    attachment_fields :avatar
    timestamps
  end

  ...
end

attachment_fields/2 in the above example, defines three different fields which are:

The :avatar field is where the path to the file in your filesystem is saved and :avatar_upload is the field we'll use for file uploads.

Keep in mind that you will need to create the necessary migration to add the Ectophile fields to your model.

In your application's top-level supervisor's start/2 function, add the following to setup the directories where your files will be uploaded:

import Ectophile.Helpers

def start(_type, _args) do
  ensure_upload_paths_exist([MyApp.User]) #=> This creates all the required directories for your uploaded files
  ...
end

After doing the migrations and defining your model's attachment_fields, you can then add file upload field to your model's form like:

...

<div class="form-group">
  <%= label f, :avatar_upload, "Avatar" %>
  <%= file_input f, :avatar_upload, class: "form-control" %>
</div>

...

That's it!!! Now every time a user uploads a file and submits a form, that file is stored in a configurable location in your priv/static directory and a reference to that file is stored in your database.

In your template, you can then do:

<img alt="<%= @user.avatar %>" src="<%= static_path(@conn, Ectophile.Helpers.static_path(avatar)) %>">

Important links