Encoded URLs incompatible with non-Ruby clients

[cgriego]

Encoded URLs incompatible with non-Ruby clients

[dvdplm]

We are experiencing the same issue and it's going to be something of a showstopper for us. Given a valid uid, say "avatar/123/big_original.jpg", how can I generate the url for it in javascript? As it stands, Dragonfly base64 encodes it AND Marshals it, so any other language is cut out.

I've been wondering about the reason for this implementation choice but come up short. There's not much extra data in there:

>> Base64.decode64("BAhbBlsHOgZmSSIaaW1hZ2VzLzEvb3JpZ2luYWwuanBnBjoGRVQ.jpg")
=> "\x04\b[\x06[\a:\x06fI\"\x1Aimages/1/original.jpg\x06:\x06ET#"
>> Marshal.load _
=> [[:f, "images/1/original.jpg"]]

Surely it can't be a security measure?

[markevans]

It's not a security measure, but it is quicker, easier and more flexible than json encoding it, as well as not relying on any other library.
It easily allows for complex multi-step jobs with option hashes as arguments. It just happens that this the most simple example of a job.

I created routed endpoints for exactly the type of thing you're doing: http://markevans.github.com/dragonfly/file.URLs.html#Routed_Endpoints

If you're using Rails 3, you could create a simple routed endpoint, e.g.:

match '/images/:uid' => Dragonfly[:images].endpoint{|params, app|
  app.fetch(params[:uid])
}

Then creating the route in javascript is as simple as

'/images/' + encodeURIComponent(uid)

encodeURIComponent(uid) is needed because forward slashes will confuse the rails routing system.

You could even use sizes, etc.:

match '/images/:uid/:size' => Dragonfly[:images].endpoint{|params, app|
  app.fetch(params[:uid]).thumb(params[:size])
}