CoffeeScript working strangely with Rails 4 - ruby-on-rails

Question

I cannot get CoffeeScript working with Rails. This is the first time I'm using CoffeeScript and I'm also fairly new with Rails too, so I don't know how to make this simple CoffeeScript function to work in the right way. Below is my people.js.coffee file at app/assets/javascript directory.
myFunction = ->
alert "test"
The alert “test” message only shows up when I load the page (app/views/people.html.erb and _form.html.erb partial); not when I click the below button in the form:
<%= submit_tag "Test CoffeeScript", :type => 'button',
:id => 'coffeeScript', :onclick => 'myFunction()' %>
I don't know why this strange behaviour is happening. Why :onclick is not working? The generated source code for the button should be ok:
<input id="coffeeScript" name="commit" onclick="myFunction()"
type="button" value="Test CoffeeScript" />
Below is my application.js file at app/assets/javascript.
...
//
//= require jquery
//= require jquery_ujs
//= require turbolinks
//= require_tree .
My Ruby version is 2.1.0
Here are some values when I ran bundle show command:
coffee-rails (4.0.1)
coffee-script (2.2.0)
coffee-script-source (1.7.0)
jbuilder (1.5.3)
jquery-rails (3.1.0)
rails (4.0.2)
railties (4.0.2)
sass (3.2.19)
sass-rails (4.0.3)
sprockets (2.11.0)
sprockets-rails (2.0.1)
turbolinks (2.2.2)
My JavaScript files are working ok; I tried similar type of function in JavaScript and it was ok.

Answer 1

It's because the function is in another scope. You can do it either with unobtrusive jquery.
$ ->
myFunction = ->
alert("test")
$("#coffeeScript").on "click", ->
myFunction()
And remove the onclick handler from
<%= submit_tag "Test CoffeeScript", type: 'button', id: 'coffeeScript' %>
or...
root = exports ? this
root.myFunction = () -> alert("test!")
I'd recommend the first one, but that is just my opinion though. Also, you have to be very careful about indentation in CoffeeScript, it works a lot like Python, whitespace matters.
An explanation on scopes and js/coffee is here How do I define global variables in CoffeeScript?