This exists because Paperclip emits a lot of 404 errors if you clone your development db from production. If you do not clone your development db from production, you probably should not use this.

development.rb

require "middleware/paperclip_middleware"

Rails.application.configure do
  # other stuff
  config.middleware.use(PaperclipMiddleware)
end

paperclip_middleware.rb

# lib/middleware/paperclip_middleware.rb

class PaperclipMiddleware
  attr_reader :app

  def initialize(app)
    @app = app
  end

  def call(env)
    if env.fetch("REQUEST_METHOD") == "GET" && env.fetch("REQUEST_PATH").match?("paperclip")
      log_tagged { "OVERRIDING PAPERCLIP IN DEVELOPMENT" }
      
      # Decide what you want to do here
      # I decided to serve a static image
      file = File.read(Rails.root.join("public", "no-photo.png"))
      
      [200, { "Content-Type" => "image/png" }, [file]]
    else
      app.call(env)
    end
  end

  private

  def log_tagged
    Rails.logger.tagged("PAPERCLIP MIDDLEWARE") { Rails.logger.debug(yield) }
  end
end