Question

I want to use SoundManager2 to play sounds in my Ruby on Rails application. One of the things it wants is a directory with swfs. Where do I put it and then how do I configure my soundmanager? I want to put them in a directory /soundmanager/ and use JS such as the following:

<script>
if (soundManager) {
  soundManager.setup({
    url: '/soundmanager/',
    onready: function() {
      var myGameMusic = soundManager.createSound({
        id: 'music1',
        url: 'music1.wav'
      });
      myGameMusic.play();
    },
    ontimeout: function() {
      console.log("Error in soundManager.setUp")
      // Hrmm, SM2 could not start. Missing SWF? Flash blocked? Show an error, etc.?
    }
  });
}
</script>

Where do I put the swfs (/soundmanager/) and how do I configure it to be public?

A related question is: suppose I have some PDFs that I want to make downlaodable. Where do I put those so that they’re downloadable?

I’m confused because there is a /public directory but apparently it doesn’t work in rails 3.1 anymore.

Answer 1

You put them in app/assets/

The key is that they are served from there in development mode.

In production mode, the assets are minified and placed in public/

This is called ‘asset compilation’ and was introduced in Rails 3.1 and has caused a lot of confusion as you have seen.