How do I throw away the original image file and just keep the resizes with Paperclip and Rails 3?

Question

I am using Paperclip to, among other things, allow a registered user to upload an avatar for use on thier profile. I want to store a big and small version of the image which will be rmagicked to standard sizes. Now, what i want to do, is store these two standard sizes (:normal and :tiny, for example.) but I do not want to store the :original.

This will be nice for several reasons as I will never display or use any version than the two standard (re)sizes.

Answer 1

I can't think of an way to do that with Paperclip directly, but you could remove the original manually after creating the record. An example could look like this:

class Photo
  has_attached_file :photo

  after_create :destroy_original

  protected

    def destroy_original
      # photo.url will look something like /system/photos/1/original.png
      File.unlink("#{Rails.root}/public#{self.photo.url}")
    end

end

Answer 2

What is your reasoning for wanting to delete the files? File storage is so cheap now, that it's not really a valid reason anymore.

I would advise against deleting the original files. If you ever decide you want to resize the files using Paperclip's rake tasks, you will need the originals.