One of the most common features for web applications I’ve built over the last 4 years doing rails is file management. Users download file attachments in almost every web application I use. Thankfully rails has a really capable suite of file management tools, and there are several great plugins to handle some of the more mundane functionality you’d need.

Over the next month or so I’m going to cover the set of techniques I use when building file management solutions for my clients, and some really exciting up and coming solutions which solve the last of my annoyances.

The rough order of business will be:

1. File Downloads Done Right
2. File Management Plugins
3. Painless File Uploads
4. Storing your Files

If there’s anything in particular that you’d like to see covered, let me know in the comments.