The RailsApplicationAssets is a Rails plugin (for Rails >= 3 only, sorry).

The plugin purpose is to make the rails asset tag helpers (image_tag, javascript_include_tag etc.) aware for a shared environment. It was done for a web site with running multiple rails apps underneath.

1. On out web server we have directories for shraed assets below the root directory (/images, /javascrips etc.)

2. Every rails app is running under an own relative url root path (for example /shop)

3. Every rails app is allowed to have own, non shared assets below its relative url root path (/shop/javascripts, /shop/images, etc.)

The plugin modify the computation of the public path for the assets used by the rails asset helpers (image_tag, javascript_include_tag, image_path etc.)

The standard behaviour of the rails asset helpers are, if you call for example the image_tag hepler this way:

image_tag 'shop/teaser.png'

it creates the following html tag for you:

<img alt="teaser" src="/images/shop/teaser.png">

if you using this plugin and your Rails app is named "shop" it swaps the image and shop path elements:

<img alt="teaser" src="/shop/images/teaser.png">

Other image pathes leave it unmodified:

image_tag 'logo.png'

results to

<img alt="teaser" src="/images/logo.png">

as without this plugin.

To use the plugin you hav to do the following:

Add gem 'rails_application_assets' to your Gemfile.

Run bundle install

Leave all your shared assets into the subdirectories in the root directory (/images, /javascrips etc.) of your web server.

Create a directory public/shop (or whatever your rails app is named) in your Rails app. Create subdirectories for your assets (public/shop/javascrips, public/shop/images and so on).

Move all your non-shared, rails-app-only assets under this directories.

Prefix the path argument of your asset helpers for your non-shared, rails-app-only assets whit /shop.

You are done :-)

Copyright (c) 2011 Peter Ehrenberg, released under the MIT license