Loading Controller-specific Assets with Sprockets v3.0
Posted on May 20, 2016 by Carsten Zimmermann
Going from Rails v4.2.4 to v4.2.6 – a mere patchlevel update, mind you – became a Yak-shaving nightmare: Upgrading two other gems that broke with v4.2.6 brought in Sprockets v3.x. And that broke our little logic to include controller-specific javascript.
We have separate JS files following a naming convention that should be included in the layout when they are present. The path is constructed as follows:
module ApplicationHelper
def controller_specific_js
"modules/#{controller_name}"
end
end
In the pre-update version, we included the Javascript like this:
# somewhere in our layout file:
- if Rails.application.assets.find_asset controller_specific_js
= javascript_include_tag controller_specific_js
find_asset was gone post-update and none of the discussed solutions in issue
rails/rails#311 were
working for us. assets_manifest[filename] was always empty and we didn’t
want to pass asset_path(filename) without really knowing if the asset exists.
However, we noticed that existing assets had the literal "/assets/" in
their path only when found. We used that to determine whether or not to out the
JS include statement:
module ApplicationHelper
def controller_specific_js
asset_path("modules/#{controller_name}")
end
end
# somewhere in our layout file:
- if controller_specific_js =~ /\/assets\//
= javascript_include_tag controller_specific_js
Kinda ugly, yes, but seemed to get the job done. Only it didn’t. Apparently
asset_path has some additional behind-the-scenes magic that, to add insult to
injury, behaves differently in development than on staging/production of
course: It requires an explicit filename extension to locate the asset.
Behold the final version:
module ApplicationHelper
def controller_specific_js
"modules/#{controller_name}"
end
end
# somewhere in our layout file:
- if (asset_path(controller_specific_js + '.js') =~ /\/assets\//)
= javascript_include_tag controller_specific_js
YMMV, of course, but we hope it helps.