Don’t use Rails.env.development? to determine paperclip file location.

I recently ran into this following code in a project that I inherited:

def get_company_doc_file(company_doc)
  if Rails.env.development?
    company_doc.company_file.path
  else
    company_doc.company_file.url
  end
end

The problem with this code is that if I want to troubleshoot the remote files on production or staging in a local development version of the application, I will get some strange errors and worse: I won’t know what is causing my errors!

Here’s the correct way to handle this:

def get_company_doc_file(company_doc)
  if company_doc.company_file.options[:storage] == :filesystem
    company_doc.company_file.path
  else
    company_doc.company_file.url
  end
end

In general, I recommend people stay away from using Rails.env.development? anywhere in the app or lib folder of the Rails code.