---
title: Paperclip is Going Three-Point-Oh Nelly
teaser:
tags: news,web,open source,ruby,paperclip
author: Prem Sichanugrist
published_on: 2012-03-26
---

The new version of your favorite file upload library, [Paperclip][paperclip]
[3.0.0][paperclip3], has been released earlier today. We changed a lot of
internals to make Paperclip better. These changes lay the groundwork for the
shiny, new features that will come in the future.

## Goodbye, Rails 2.3.x and Ruby 1.8.7

[Ruby 1.8.7][ruby eol] and [Ruby on Rails 2.3.x][rails eol] are both reaching
end of life now, so this is a good time to drop support for them. This let us
remove some code and introduce a new validator syntax (below.)

If you're still using Ruby on Rails 2.3.x or Ruby 1.8.7, you should lock
Paperclip to version 2.x by doing this:

    gem "paperclip", "~> 2.7"

In some rare case that there's a critical bug in Paperclip 2.7.x, we'll release
a patch version under that minor version. However, you're advised to upgrade to
a newer version of Ruby and Rails as soon as you can.

## Modularized Internals

We're working to extract functionality into modules. We're not done with this
yet, and it is an ongoing process. If you've [freedom patched][freedom patched]
Paperclip, you'll need to look out for this as some of the methods might have
new names or locations.

If you are developing a plugin for Paperclip—e.g. custom storage, a
processor, or a validator—we would love to hear from you. We want to
expose hooks to help you develop your plugin and reduce the risk of breaking
things in the future.

## Default attachment path has been changed

When you're installing the new version of Paperclip, you'll be greeted with this
upgrading message:

    ##################################################
    #  NOTE FOR UPGRADING FROM PRE-3.0 VERSION       #
    ##################################################

    Paperclip 3.0 introduces a non-backward compatible change in your attachment
    path. This will help to prevent attachment name clashes when you have
    multiple attachments with the same name. If you didn't alter your
    attachment's path and are using Paperclip's default, you'll have to add
    `:path` and `:url` to your `has_attached_file` definition. For example:

        has_attached_file :avatar,
          :path => ":rails_root/public/system/:attachment/:id/:style/:filename",
          :url => "/system/:attachment/:id/:style/:filename"

Going forward, the default URL for your attachment will be
`/system/:class/:attachment/:id_partition/:style/:filename`. This will prevent
filename collisions and will reduce the number of files in a single directory.

## Rails 3 Validators

All of the validators have been rewritten to take the full advantage of Rails 3.
They're now in their own Validator class, and can be passed into `validates` or
`validates_with` like any other Active Model validator:

    validates :avatar, :attachment_presence => true
    validates_with AttachmentPresenceValidator, :attributes => :avatar

We are also introducing a `validates_attachment` method. This method is almost
the same as the `validates` method except you can skip the `:attachment_`
prefix. We've found this helpful when defining multiple validators on a single
attachment:

    validates_attachment :avatar, :presence => true,
      :content_type => { :content_type => "image/jpg" },
      :size => { :in => 0..10.kilobytes }

## Going forward

I would like to thank our [contributors][contributors] and all of the other
users who are helping to make Paperclip better and better. Please give this new
version a try. If you find a bug, please [file an issue][issues], or better, you
can also [help us][pull request] fixing it.

We're thrilled to introduce the new Paperclip, and we hope that you'll like them.

[paperclip]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip
[paperclip3]: http://rubygems.org/gems/paperclip/versions/3.0.0
[ruby eol]: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2011/10/06/plans-for-1-8-7/
[rails eol]: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rubyonrails-core/MP9_YYpkKPM/rJoZkeU4Ur4J
[freedom patched]: http://deadprogrammersociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/10-cool-things-from-rubyconf-x.html
[contributors]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip/contributors
[issues]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip/issues/new
[pull request]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip/pull/new