Question

I have a flash object I wish to load and I believe the best place to store that asset is in the public directory. Suppose it’s stored in public/flash, there must be a better way to path to the swf than what I’ve done below. Note the ‘data’ element, it has a relative path.

def create_vnc_object
  haml_tag :object, 
    :id => 'flash',
    :width => '100%', 
    :height => '100%',
    :type => 'application/x-shockwave-flash', 
    :data => '../../flash/flash.swf' do
      haml_tag :param, 
        :name => 'movie',
        :value => '../../flash/flash.swf'
  end
end

Is there some rails variable that points to public?

Answer 1

Wouldn’t this work?

def create_vnc_object
  haml_tag :object, 
    :id => 'flash',
    :width => '100%', 
    :height => '100%',
    :type => 'application/x-shockwave-flash', 
    :data => '/flash/flash.swf' do
      haml_tag :param, 
        :name => 'movie',
        :value => '/flash/flash.swf'
  end
end

Alternatively you could use the root_url as the prefix:

def create_vnc_object
  haml_tag :object, 
    :id => 'flash',
    :width => '100%', 
    :height => '100%',
    :type => 'application/x-shockwave-flash', 
    :data => root_url + 'flash/flash.swf' do
      haml_tag :param, 
        :name => 'movie',
        :value => root_url + 'flash/flash.swf'
  end
end

The latter works only if you have the root route in your routes.rb file. It will point to the root of your site (e.g. http://example.com/) which is basically the public folder.