Rails 3, displaying jpg images from the local file system above RAILS_ROOT

Question

I\'m trying to figure out a way to display images from a mounted file system that is not under RAILS_ROOT (in RedHat or Ubuntu environments). I don\'t want to use a symboli

Answer 1

For obvious reasons Rails won't allow a user to access parts of the filesystem outside of RAILS_ROOT/public. You were actually part of the way there when you mentioned sendfile (or x-sendfile for preference.) The solution is to have Rails serve up an html page as normal which contains links to a Rails action which serves up the individual files.

For example, let's say I want to show some images from somewhere deep in the filesystem. First I have to create an action that serves up one image at a time. So in the config/routes.rb you could add the following:

match '/serve_image/:filename' => 'images#serve'

Then I have to create a controller to match that route. For example:

class ImagesController < ApplicationController
  def serve
    path = "/my/servers/image/path/#{params[:filename]}"

    send_file( path,
      :disposition => 'inline',
      :type => 'image/jpeg',
      :x_sendfile => true )
  end
end

Now your images are available under the url: /serve_image/my_image.jpg. So the last thing to do is create a nice html page that shows all the necessary images. It's as simple as: