Ideas about tuning the Rails 3.1 assets pipeline

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Foxandxss

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Feb 13, 2012, 12:32:29 PM2/13/12

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maybe Im asking too much, but I want you, Rails developers to share your assets pipeline configurations.

Im really loving Rails but some things doesn't fit in my head and I need solutions (this perfectionism will kill me someday :P)

Is not THAT bad having all CSS and all JS compressed into one file (I think that having an import on every erb is not that bad). The problem is when you have third party css like ActiveAdmin's one that conflict with your own CSS.

I think that the default options are not the best, just a starting.

I will share what actually work for me and I hope to see if my solutions sucks and what are your solutions.

One idea is:

Remove require_tree from "application.js" and "application.css".

In application.html.erb change:

<%= stylesheet_link_tag "application", controller_name, :media => "all" %>
<%= javascript_include_tag "application", controller_name %>

So in a controller I'll have my app js/css and my controller js/css.

If a controller need more deps, I can add them on the views or in the js/css (like in app js/css).

Next, I add every controller js / css into production.rb like:

config.assets.precompile += %w( people.css languages.css people.js languages.js )

So I get a compiled css for every controller and a compiled js for every controller. The only downside is to add all extra stuff on "production.rb"

What you think? Maybe have flaws, dont know.

Solution 2:

On ActiveAdmin screencast, I saw that a solution is to remove "require_tree" and then convert the application.css to sass and then:

@import "controller_css";

For every css. And same for js.

Is the same stuff as solution 1 but having ALL css/js in the same file.

So, can you share your ideas and criticize my solutions?

Thanks.

Robert Walker

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Feb 14, 2012, 6:36:44 PM2/14/12

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Foxandxss wrote in post #1046631:

> maybe Im asking too much, but I want you, Rails developers to share your
> assets pipeline configurations.
>
> Im really loving Rails but some things doesn't fit in my head and I need
> solutions (this perfectionism will kill me someday :P)
>
> Is not THAT bad having all CSS and all JS compressed into one file (I
> think that having an import on every erb is not that bad). The problem
> is when you have third party css like ActiveAdmin's one that conflict
> with your own CSS.
>
> I think that the default options are not the best, just a starting.

Every asset a web browser requires needs a separate connection. If it's
possible to include all JS in one file and all CSS in another file the
browser only requires two connections. If the JS and CSS are broken into
multiple small files the browser must create many separate connections
to get them all.

AFAIK this is the primary reason the default convention in Rails is to
compile all JS and CSS files together in a single resource for each.
When adding gzip this method can significantly improve performance.

> On ActiveAdmin screencast, I saw that a solution is to remove
> "require_tree" and then convert the application.css to sass and then:

Framework code that contains it's own JS and CSS should really be
name-spaced in such a way as to not interfere with your own custom code.
That's not to say that all of them do so.

JavaScript and CSS are not natively name-spaced. Just having the code in
separate files will not prevent namespace collisions.