Get server file path with Paperclip
Assuming you had an attachment called avatar on an instance of a user, you can use user.avatar.path to get the full path of the file on the filesystem, and you can use user.avatar.url to give the path which you could use in image tags and whatnot.
Is that what you're meaning?
I came cross the same problem, so I made a link to it's url in show.html.erb. It works.
<p><b>Pdf:</b><%= link_to "PDF" , @product.pdf.url %></p>