Question

How can I include specific JS or CSS files (by convention ?) with Ruby Rails 3.1 ?

I have a view :
views/project/index.html.erb

And I want to include a specific javascript file for this page. I put it in
assets/javascripts/project/index.js

Same for another view :
home/index.html

Thanks

Answer 1

In the application.css and application.js file, be sure to remove the line \\= require tree.

Then, manually list all the css/js files you want included in each manifest file, for example:

// application.js
//= global.js
//= everywhere.js

Then, I would setup a yield in your header or your closing body tag for your application layout file, for instance (in haml)

%head
  %title Some Page
  = stylesheet_link_tag 'application'
  = yield :stylesheets

Then in your particular view, say _example_partial.html.haml, do this:

- content_for :stylesheets do
  = stylesheet_link_tag 'example_partial'

-# the rest of your view goes here

You do the exact same thing with Javascript files, just using javascript_include_tag instead of stylesheet_link_tag.

This will let you quickly and easily assemble view-specific javascript / css payloads. There may be a more sophisticated way to handle this using the asset pipeline, but I would suggest that if the asset pipeline is already minifying and merging you major stylesheets that this kind of +1 css / js file per view is not going to cause a major performance hit. Just try to make sure you don’t overdo it with dozens of separate files loading into a single view.