Exfile

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File upload handling in Elixir and Plug. Inspired heavily by Refile. If you use Ruby, check Refile out. I like it. A lot. 👍

Requires Elixir ~> 1.2.0. At this point, it is only tested against the most recent version of Elixir.

In very heavy development. Expect things to break. I’ll release 1.0 when it’s ready and I have it in a production environment.

Storage Adapters

Exfile, like Refile, supports pluggable storage adapters. Exfile ships with a filesystem-backed storage adapter.

  • exfile-memory — a memory-backed (ETS) storage adapter. This is usually only useful as a cache.
  • exfile-b2 — storage adapter for Backblaze B2.

File Processors

Exfile supports pluggable file processors / filters. If you’re working with images, exfile-imagemagick is recommended.

Installation

  1. Add exfile to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

        def deps do
          [{:exfile, "~> 0.3.1"}]
        end
        ```
    
  2. Ensure exfile is started before your application:

        def application do
          [applications: [:exfile]]
        end
        ```
    
  3. Mount the Exfile routes in your router.

Phoenix

defmodule MyApp.Router do
  use MyApp.Web, :router

  foward "/attachments", Exfile.Router
  ...

To use the exfile_path and exfile_url helpers, include the Exfile.Phoenix.Helpers module where you need it (probably in the view section of your web/web.ex file).

Phoenix uses Plug.Parsers with a 8 MB limit by default — this affects Exfile too. To increase it, find Plug.Parsers in MyApp.Endpoint and add the length option:

defmodule MyApp.Endpoint do
  use Phoenix.Endpoint, otp_app: :my_app

  plug Plug.Parsers,
    ...
    length: 25_000_000 # bytes; any value you deem necessary
end

Plug

defmodule MyApp.Router do
  use Plug.Router

  forward "/attachments", to: Exfile.Router
  ...

Ecto Integration

The following example will upload a file to the backend configured as “store”. If you want to upload files to an alternate backend, please take a look at Exfile.Ecto.File and Exfile.Ecto.FileTemplate for instructions on making a custom Ecto.Type for your needs.

defmodule MyApp.User do
  use Ecto.Schema

  schema "users" do
    field :profile_picture, Exfile.Ecto.File
  end
end

Configuration

In config.exs:

config :exfile, Exfile,
  secret: "secret string to generate the token used to authenticate requests",
  backends: %{
    "store" => configuration for the default persistent store
    "cache" => configuration for an ephemeral store holding temporarily uploaded content
  }

See Exfile.Config for defaults.