Showing images with carrierwave in rails 3.1 in a private store folder

Question

I have a rails 3.1 app and I am adding carrierwave to store images. But I want to store those images outside the public folde,r because they should only be accessible when users are loaded in the app. So I changed the store_dir in carrerwave with the initializer file:

CarrierWave.configure do |config|
  config.root = Rails.root
end

And my carrierwave uploader goes like this:

class ImageUploader < CarrierWave::Uploader::Base
...
def store_dir
  "imagenes_expedientes/#{model.class.to_s.underscore}/#{mounted_as}/#{model.id}"
end

Images are stored correctly and if I use the public folder everything works fine. However when trying to move things to the private folder, images are not displayed and when I try to open them in a new window I get the following error:

Routing Error

No route matches [GET] "/imagenes_expedientes/volunteer/avatar/15/avatar.jpg"

I was trying to deliver the files using send_file through the controller, but instead of loading the page I only get the image downloaded.

  def show
    send_file "#{Rails.root}/imagenes_expedientes/avatar.jpg", :type=>"application/jpg", :x_sendfile=>true
  end

Finally Images are displayed like this in the views:

<%= image_tag(@volunteer.avatar_url, :alt => "Avatar", :class => "avatar round") if @volunteer.avatar? %>

This may probably be solved rather easy, but since I am somehow new to Rails, I don´t know what to do it. Should I set a route? Or is there anyway to display the images using the send_file method?

Thanks!

ANSWER

I managed to display images using x-sendfile and putting :disposition => 'inline' as suggested by clyfe. I made a new action in my controller:

  def image
    @volunteer = Volunteer.find(params[:id])
    send_file "#{Rails.root}/imagenes_expedientes/#{@volunteer.avatar_url}",:disposition => 'inline', :type=>"application/jpg", :x_sendfile=>true
  end

Added to the routes:

  resources :volunteers do
    member do
      get 'image'
    end 
  end

And displayed in the views:

<%= image_tag(image_volunteer_path(@volunteer), :alt => "Avatar", :class => "avatar round") if @volunteer.avatar? %>

Hope it helps others!

Answer 1

:disposition => 'inline' will make your images display in the browser instead of popping up the download dialog.

def show
  send_file "#{Rails.root}/imagenes_expedientes/avatar.jpg", :disposition => 'inline', :type=>"application/jpg", :x_sendfile=>true
end

Depending on the images sizes and the number of users you might want to move this action to a metal app, or a separate so as to not block the server.