I have read following in an article
All of your custom Javascript, stylesheets, and images should go in
the app/assets/.
All third-party code that you are using (e.g. jQuery,
backbone.js, etc.) should be placed in the vendor/assets/ directory
But I did not find in the article - Why it is recommended so, any reasons?
There is no restriction that you cant put third party jQuery/CSS in the app/assets folder.
But its recommended to put the third party assets in the vendor file. It will be easily manageable for the large applications and will save a lots of time in the long run.
Well I presume you are clear with app/assets/ folder.
In vendor/assets you put all third-party code that you are using.
So after you put that code in assets you need to require them in application.css and application.js.
This is doing on this way because rails by default look in vendor/assets/ and it is easier to manage third-party code.
Related
I'm using ruby on rails 5. What is the difference app/assets, lib/assets and vendor/asset?
If I write my own js scripts should they be included in the app/assets? How about if I use a bootstrap library where should I put it at?
And regardless which folder they are in, i am able to access them using javascript_include_tag? Example:
javascript_include_tag "xmlhr"
As described in the asset pipeline guide:
app/assets is for assets that are owned by the application, such as custom images, JavaScript files or stylesheets.
lib/assets is for your own libraries' code that doesn't really fit into the scope of the application or those libraries which are shared across applications.
vendor/assets is for assets that are owned by outside entities, such as code for JavaScript plugins and CSS frameworks. Keep in mind that third party code with references to other files also processed by the asset Pipeline (images, stylesheets, etc.), will need to be rewritten to use helpers like asset_path.
Me, I only use app and vendor. My stuff goes to app, naturally. And 3rd party stuff (jquery plugins, bootstrap themes and whatnot) goes to vendor.
app/assets
It should include all the assets written by you and only relevant to your project.
lib/assets
It should include all the assets which are created by you but can be extracted to be used by another project.
vendor/assets
It should include all the assets downloaded/purchased from third party like Bootstrap.
I can't find a good resource for explaining how to include a more complicated 3rd party package that includes js, css, and other types of assets within the same plugin. For example, the plupload plugin has a lot of different assets spread out in multiple folders. I have put it in the vendor/assets/plupload/ folder and then require the tree in my manifest file, but then it refers to other other files with a relative pathname that works in development, but the path changes in production. I can then change the references to use asset_path, but then I am modifying the vendor code which just seems wrong.
I know there is a gem out there for the plupload library, I am just using it as a case study to try and understand the best practice for including a more complicated 3rd party library than what the Rails Guides show.
Thanks!
You can place the contents related to any plugin or library in a single folder public folder. This will make all your assets available and there should not be any issue.
In Rails 4, the JS or CSS files, should I putting them in vendor > assets or in app > assets?
There are 3 asset locations in Rails
/app/assets/{images,javascripts,stylesheets} for the application-specific assets.
/lib/assets/{images,javascripts,stylesheets} for library assets. It's not very clear the boundary between this folder and the others, there is a lot of overlap. However, you normally place here assets that are shared across multiple apps under your control or libraries that don't normally tie specifically to the application.
/vendor/assets/{images,javascripts,stylesheets} for vendored assets. You should place here assets downloaded from packages where you have no control and that are not intended to be manually edited. This is the case, for instance, of bootstrap, jquery or other frameworks, as well as javascript plugins.
There is one important difference to keep in mind. Assets in /app are reloaded on every request. The other folders are not autoreloaded, thus if you make changes you will need to restart the server.
Your CSS goes in app/assets. CSS from 3rd party vendors goes in vendor/assets.
For an application built on top of Rails (3.1.8) with ExtJS 4.1, we have the following files layout:
app/
assets/
javascript/
application.coffee
WID/
Lots of coffeescript files and folders.
public/
extjs/
ext-all-debug-w-comments.js and the whole ExtJS framework.
Our application heavily relies on the Ext loader (Ext.Require) to dynamically load files based on users rights / allowed modules. We would like to keep this functionality as much as possible, so only the required files are requested from the server. Bandwidth isn't really an issue, as the application is intranet-based (On a LAN).
In development environment, everything runs smooth. In production environment however, we are having problems. It looks like either the "rake assets:precompile" task is concatenating all files into an application.js file, and then when accessing our application the Ext loader complains that it can't find individual files (Because assets/WID/.../file.js isn't being served by the rails server).
So right now, i'm not sure what would be the best move to take... Is there anyone able to help us with a successful Rails + ExtJS production setup taking the best from the assets pipeline?
Thank you,
Pierre.
I think you should move your javascripts (and generally all the assets) from your public into vendor/assets/javascripts when you are in development environment. This way the asset-pipeline gets in charge.
EDIT: You may consider reverting your manifest file to application.js, not application.coffee. Generally it is a bad idea to rename these special files : application.css and application.js .In case you have some coffescript to add , just create a new file and place it in an asset directory.
I've found several sites online that explain the DIR structure of a Rails app, but I'm still not clear on a few, mainly:
/vendor
/lib
/public
What should go where? I want to know the best practice. For example, I have jQuery plugins, should those be located in /vendor? /public? /lib? I've read all 3 from different sites online.
Thanks
Vendor is third party code / libraries, so, yes, a good place for jQuery plugins.
Public is for static assets, stuff that gets no benefit from being in the asset pipeline.
Lib is generally used to contain your code that is not specific to the app. i.e. stuff you use in multiple apps. There is a trend to put domain logic in lib e.g. domain classes not based on ActiveModel. Gary Bernhardt (https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/) is a proponent of this.
Typically the contents of /public are directly served by the web server (nginx, apache etc.) without intervention from rails, so traditionally all of your static assets (images, stylesheets, javascripts etc.) went in here. You can still put your javascript in there but it's a bit old fashioned.
Rails 3.1 introduced the asset pipeline which changed all of this. Assets in app/assets, lib/assets and vendor/assets all get servers up by the asset pipeline. Normally your application specific assets would go in app/assets and 3rd party libraries (such as a query plugin) would go in vendor/assets. If you were developing your own set of jquery plugins you might put them in lib/assets. Assets will 'work' no matter where you put them though - it's just a question of organisation.
Gems can also have their own asset folders, for example the jquery-rails gem bundles jquery and allows your app to serve up jquery without actually copying it into your app. I find this even neater than putting things in vendor/assets.