How to save images to a subdirectory

[realmadrid2727]

Hi everyone,

OK, so I've got an app together, deployed on a Joyent Accelerator, and realized that whenever I redeploy changes I've made, subversion goes ahead and gets rid of everything in the images/users directory (images uploaded by users are thrown in there within trees and trees of categorical directories.) That's understandable, I expect that to happen now that I think about it.

What I would like to do now is save those images in a subdirectory or something which is not associated with the app, for instance, http://images.myserver.com.

Right now, I'm writing the file as such:

@dir = "#{RAILS_ROOT}/public/images/users/#{@substring_dir}/#{@user.screen_name}/#{@classified.id}"
File.makedirs @dir

Then the file is saved in that new directory, which would be something like this: "http://myserver.com/images/users/u/s/e/user1/coolimage.jpg"

I would like it to be: "http://images.myserver.com/users/u/s/e/user1/coolimage.jpg"

I'm assuming the subdirectory won't be associated with the app, so I can update the app with subversion to my heart's content and those files in the image subdirectory won't be affected. Not like I know how to even create subdirectories yet, but I suppose that's something for another forum

Thanks in advance!

[lo0ol]

I was trying to remember how I dealt with it since I went through the exact the same process as you a year ago- at least that's a good sign of when you figure it out you don't have to deal with it again for years.

Anyway, after a few unsuccessful tries (like using Rails to send the binary bits of each image using send_file, which was a terrible idea) I ended up using a symbolic link. That meant I could toss my images somewhere outside of my Subversion repository that didn't get overwritten every time I checked a new version in, and since it's a symbolic link to a folder in my /images folder I didn't have to deal with trying to figure out how to link to images- they were just there, thanks to the magical powers of symbolic links.

[realmadrid2727]

I realized I meant to say subdomain, but you understood nonetheless.

That solution looks like the way to go. What I was thinking of doing was instead of saving at "#{RAILS_ROOT}/public/images/...", I would save directly under the directory where I was pointing my subdomain to, something like "/var/www/subdomains/images/..."

I'd have to go back and change a bit of code to make sure all user-uploaded images read from there, but I figured it would work. Your idea looks much simpler :-)