Compile sass stylsheets in Rails without fingerprinting - ruby-on-rails

I need to use my sass stylesheets for another non-rails site (a Wordpress blog), so I need to compile them into a css file without the file fingerprinting from the asset pipeline. I saw this related post:
Rails 4 Asset Pipeline: Compile both with and without fingerprint
However, it doesn't seem to give me the non-fingerprinted stylesheet I'm looking for

Rails 4 has documentation for this.
Just set
config.assets.digest = false
in your environment configuration file (for example config/environments/production.rb)
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html#turning-digests-off

There is a gem called non-stupid-digest-assets which allows you to determine which files are "fingerprinted" and which are not.
#config/initializers/non_digest_assets.rb
NonStupidDigestAssets.whitelist = ["your_file.js"]
You'll then be able to call it your_file.js as well as using asset_path asset_path("your_file.js")

Related

Rails 4 Heroku Assets not loading, though in heroku asset pipeline

I have a problem with certain assets on heroku. (local environment is working fine)
The assets are in the pipeline. If I execute in the heroku rails console:
helper.asset_path("typicons.woff")
helper.asset_path("backgrounds/1.jpg")
I get the following response:
/assets/typicons-c2430aad2b6a33948dc064cfaee8ad65ff9e3ca439834f3aaa84abec3d10dea8.woff
/assets/backgrounds/1-c2098ff7e7fbb89b2d18e9cd9089f712f2b837265d1d2e4182c36c23392760c6.jpg
So I assume that the assets are in the heroku asset pipeline. As well by opening the url directly with the digest in it, I receive the file.
However if I try to reference the files in css or javascript like this:
$('.top-content').backstretch("/assets/backgrounds/1.jpg");
The file does not load. As well opening /assets/backgrounds/1.jpg directly does not work. Referencing assets from .rb or .erb files works.
Please can someone tell me, what kind of config I have to change, so the URLs for assets work as well without the digest?
Thank you!
Assuming you are using a fairly standard asset pipeline setup, this passage from the Rails Guides should help:
If you add an erb extension to a JavaScript asset, making it something such as application.js.erb, you can then use the asset_path helper in your JavaScript code:
-- http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html (section 2.3.3)
In your example, add the erb extension to your JS file and then change the line to
$('.top-content').backstretch(<%= asset_path("backgrounds/1.jpg") %>);
The problem is that Rails 4 does not support non-digested assets at all.(For whatever reason)
Here is a more thorough explanation on the issue: Non Digested Asset Names in Rails 4
My personal workaround was to add a public asset folder to my app:
public/assets/static/
and upload the assets required there. Since it was only about fonts and background images, which do not change often, it does not seem to be a problem. In the link above there are several other solutions proposed.

Rails 4 Asset Pipeline: Asset missing fingerprint in asset_path from js

I am deploying a Rails 4.0 application which includes HTML partial templates as assets for our front-end javascript framework. Although these templates are part of the asset pipeline and are properly precompiled, when I call asset_path from embedded ruby in our js files, it returns the path to our templates without the fingerprint.
I am quite certain that this is purely a Asset Pipeline question, but to give you a complete sense of our tech stack: We use Rails 4.0, Ruby 2.1, AngularJS for our front-end MVC framework, and AssetSync to synchronize our assets between Rails and our CDN.
An example of where this occurs (in a file included in app/assets/application.js.erb:
$routeProvider
.when('/', {
templateUrl: "<%= asset_path 'home.html' %>",
controller: "HomeController"
});
This works great locally, but as soon as config.assets.digest = true in production, the call to asset_path does not properly factor in the fingerprint. The templates are in the app/assets directory within a new subdirectory templates. So in the above example, the home.html asset is at app/assets/templates/home.html. Our javascript has itself been precompiled at that point, so I'm thinking that it might be an issue of which order the assets are precompiled in.
I've noticed a few issues on the Rails Github (1, 2, 3) and a couple of SO posts about fingerprints not being set properly (1, 2), but can't find anything about them not being included at all...
Any help or ideas that you can provide would be much appreciated.
Edit 4/15: forgot to include that the extensions on my application javascript file DOES include .erb (app/assets/application.js.erb). Thanks Alex for catching that. I've updated it above.
Also, following instructions in this article on Heroku, I confirmed that running puts helper.asset_path("home.html") from within a Rails console running in production prints a properly fingerprinted URL for that asset.
This appears to be an issue with the AssetSync gem. I removed it, reconfigured the app so that Rails serves the assets, and the fingerprinting works fine.
If anyone else finds this question and is running into the same issue, I would recommend against using AssetSync. According to Heroku:
Many developers make use of Amazon’s S3 service for serving static assets that
have been uploaded previously, either manually or by some form of build process.
Whilst this works, this is not recommended as S3 was designed as a file storage
service and not for optimal delivery of files under load. Therefore, serving
static assets from S3 is not recommended.
Amazon CloudFront is the preferred method of serving assets through a CDN, and is very easy to configure with a Rails app that serves its own static assets, accomplishing the same goals as AssetSync.
I'm pretty new to this stuff, but to get the asset_path to work, don't you need a .erb on the end of that file?
Check out the bottom of this article for more info:
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/rails-4-asset-pipeline
If it works in development, that may not help. There is a helpful section on debugging at the bottom of the article though.
Update
Here's another article that could help:
https://medium.com/self-directed-learning/9ba1f595102a
Flipping on this configuration in Heroku made some of my asset pipeline problems go away:
heroku labs:enable user-env-compile -a yourapp
Hope this helps!
Alex

How does Rails and Ember integration work, do all the ember files get combined?

I'v seen some larger emberjs implementations like discourse: https://github.com/discourse/discourse/tree/master/app/assets/javascripts/discourse
Can someone explain to me how this gets integration into rails?
What happens behind the scenes when the asset gets compiled? To the files just get minified and merged or there is more to it?
You need to read about Asset Pipeline.
The directory you linked to above is included by the various require lines in app/assets/javascripts/main_include.js, which is itself included by app/assets/javascripts/application.js.erb.
The gem doing the heavy lifting (the one responsible for interpreting the require lines) is Sprockets.
What happens behind the scenes when the asset gets compiled? To the files just get minified and merged or there is more to it?
Between the asset pipeline docs and sprockets' docs, your very general question should be more than answered. In a nutshell, yes, the files are minified and merged, and yes there is a whole lot more to it.
In addition to reading about the Asset Pipeline and Sprockets (which handle JS minification, etc), also take a look at the ember-rails gem: https://github.com/emberjs/ember-rails
ember-rails allows you to include Ember.JS into your Rails 3.1+ application. The gem will also pre-compile your handlebars templates when building your asset pipeline. It includes development and production copies of Ember.

When to use the asset pipeline

I'm serving a semi-static site with rails, just to get used to rails conventions.
Do I really need to use the asset pipeline to serve the .css and .js?
I could always precompile my .scss and coffee-script before their on the server.
and by semi-static, I mean that I may include some gems to do syntax highlighting or some other little tasks.
I guess it would be good practice?
I'm super new to rails and programming in general, by the way.
I just want another opinion.
Thanks, in advance.
You should use the asset pipeline if you are using rails 3.1 or above. It is far faster than the previous serving of assets in rails -- among other things, it munges and minifies the files.
You should always precompile your assets in production, whether or not you are using straight .css or .scss because if you don't precompile your assets, rails will still have to compile them at runtime.

Should I still use Jammit on Rails 3.1?

I've used jammit to do my asset packaging so far, but my next application will be in Rails 3.1
Should/Can I still use Jammit? Or should I work with the built-in asset pipeline?
You can still use Jammit, but the built in asset pipeline is The Rails Way™.
I'd recommend you try out the asset pipeline/Sprockets - if you don't like it, it's as simple as moving the javascript and css files back to the public directory and setting up Jammit the old way.
I found that setting up the asset pipeline the first time around for browser specific css was a little non-intuitive, but, that was just me being unfamiliar with the whole process. Sprockets works well and allows you to use ERB/HAML with your coffee script or sass (if you want.)

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