Some non-image blobs can be previewed: that is, they can be presented as images. A video blob can be previewed by extracting its first frame, and a PDF blob can be previewed by extracting its first page.
A previewer extracts a preview image from a blob. Active Storage provides previewers for videos and PDFs. ActiveStorage::Previewer::VideoPreviewer
is used for videos whereas ActiveStorage::Previewer::PopplerPDFPreviewer
and ActiveStorage::Previewer::MuPDFPreviewer
are used for PDFs. Build custom previewers by subclassing ActiveStorage::Previewer
and implementing the requisite methods. Consult the ActiveStorage::Previewer
documentation for more details on what’s required of previewers.
To choose the previewer for a blob, Active Storage calls accept?
on each registered previewer in order. It uses the first previewer for which accept?
returns true when given the blob. In a Rails
application, add or remove previewers by manipulating Rails.application.config.active_storage.previewers
in an initializer:
Rails.application.config.active_storage.previewers
# => [ ActiveStorage::Previewer::PopplerPDFPreviewer, ActiveStorage::Previewer::MuPDFPreviewer, ActiveStorage::Previewer::VideoPreviewer ]
# Add a custom previewer for Microsoft Office documents:
Rails.application.config.active_storage.previewers << DOCXPreviewer
# => [ ActiveStorage::Previewer::PopplerPDFPreviewer, ActiveStorage::Previewer::MuPDFPreviewer, ActiveStorage::Previewer::VideoPreviewer, DOCXPreviewer ]
Outside of a Rails
application, modify ActiveStorage.previewers
instead.
The built-in previewers rely on third-party system libraries. Specifically, the built-in video previewer requires FFmpeg. Two PDF previewers are provided: one requires Poppler, and the other requires muPDF (version 1.8 or newer). To preview PDFs, install either Poppler or muPDF.
These libraries are not provided by Rails
. You must install them yourself to use the built-in previewers. Before you install and use third-party software, make sure you understand the licensing implications of doing so.
- MODULE ActiveRecord
- MODULE ActiveStorage
- CLASS ActiveStorage::Preview
- CLASS ActiveStorage::Preview::UnprocessedError