Slides from my presentation at WellRailed (27th July 2011) Additional Links: http://ryanbigg.com/guides/asset_pipeline.html twitter: @static_storm blog: http://incitecode.com

1. Rails 3.1
Asset Pipeline
Jeremy Olliver

2. Rails 3.1 Release
Schedule
• August 8th: Rails 3.1.0.rc6
• August 22nd: Rails 3.1.0

3. Native Support for
• Sass
• Coffeescript
• asset packaging/minification/compression
• cache friendly static filenames (hash in
filename not mtime querystring)

4. Assets Directory
Structure
app
assets
javascripts
stylesheets
images
optional:
lib/assets (non-application specific assets)
vendor/assets (third party assets, css/js plugins etc)

5. How Does it Work?
• manifest files specify js/css files to load
• app/assets/javascripts/application.js
• app/assets/stylesheets/application.css
• Only needs changing for specifying load order
• Picks up coffeescript, javascript, css, and sass files

6. Coffeescript / JS
compilation
• provided through sprockets and execjs
• Need to include a javascript runtime such
as node.js or a native ruby implementation
such as gems ‘therubyracer’ or ‘mustang’

7. Sass / Compass /
Referencing assets
• use compass ‘rails31’ branch
• use sass (scss) it’s awesome
• referencing assets/images requires erb and
asset_path helper

8. Deployment
• updated capistrano version coming up
• in the meantime:
• rake assets:precompile
RAILS_ENV=production
• compiles to public/assets