rails 3 polymorphic association with paperclip and multiple models

Question

I want to make polymorphic associations with paperclip, and allow my user to have one avatar and multiple images.

Attachment model:

Answer 1

I'm not sure you really need to be polymorphic. How about this approach, which uses has_many :through? In plain English, the user has one avatar which has multiple images, and through this association you can call User.images to get the collection of images associated with the avatar.

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :avatar
  has_many :images, :through => :avatar
end

class Avatar < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  has_many :images
end

class Image < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :avatar
  has_attached_file :image, :styles => { :thumb => "150x150>", :view => "260x180>" },
end

Having said all of this, I am left to wonder why you need to go through all this anyway. Why not just do

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :avatars
end

which would give you as many images (avatars) as you want.