4 Videos on Active Storage Added to Rails 6 Course

Earlier this month we decided to add Active Storage to our Rails 6 course. We figured on one new video around 10 minutes. Maybe two videos. It turns out we’re bad estimators. 🤦

When we got working on the actual details we quickly realized that there was more than meets the eye…

Our app already uses images in the Asset Pipeline, so we need to address the ramifications of switching from the Asset Pipeline to storing images in the cloud. Even then, not everything gets stored in the cloud. Active Storage uses two database tables and a polymorphic association. And it’s helpful to know how that works.

Then, speaking of the cloud, it needs secure access to a developer’s super-secret credentials. And doing that right is important. We wouldn’t want you to accidentally leave your 🔑 key right on top of your treasure chest of secrets.

And then there was that last innocent-looking bullet point on our original outline: Deployment. Now, Active Storage has a slick way of switching storage services on a per-environment basis, so deployment isn’t a huge deal. But it’s also not just a one-line command.

Sure, we could have tried to jam all this into a single how-to video, but the pacing would be all wrong and you wouldn’t really understand why it all worked.

So fast-forward and we ended up putting together 4 new videos! We hope you find them helpful for implementing Active Storage in your own app.

Up, up, and away! 🌤