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How to namespace our JS for use with the Rails asset pipeline

I understand the reasoning behind the rails 3.1 asset pipeline: we compile all the JS in a neat, cacheable file to improve performance. Great we want that.

However, loading everything also means we've got to be very careful that we not use a certain ID or class on multiple pages, if we have some JS attached to it. Or else, the JS will fire on both pages, since its always loaded.

Now, what we want to achieve is the following:
* we want to keep everything in a single JS file (we know how we can load files separately, just don't want that)
* we want to namespace the JS in each controller_name.js so it's only loaded when the appropriate namespace is initialized
* we want to initialize the appropriate namespace by reading the current controller from say a data-attribute on the <body> tag of our layout

The problem is: we don't have a good idea how to implement in JS. Particularly, how should we namespace the JS and then dynamically initialize it based on the contents of a HTML tag..

Any help is greatly appreciated!

like image 484
ErwinM Avatar asked Dec 19 '11 19:12

ErwinM


2 Answers

Here is a way to namespace everything on a controller/action level

  • http://www.viget.com/inspire/extending-paul-irishs-comprehensive-dom-ready-execution/
  • above was inspired by http://paulirish.com/2009/markup-based-unobtrusive-comprehensive-dom-ready-execution/

You basically declare you body as such

<body data-controller="<%= controller_name %>" data-action="<%= action_name %>">

And then these methods are called (which each have a series of methods -- so if you need something on every page, it's in common/init. Or on all users actions, that's on users/init. Or only the users show page? that's users/show.

SITENAME.common.init();
SITENAME.users.init();
SITENAME.users.show();

I've used this and it works very very well.

like image 108
Jesse Wolgamott Avatar answered Oct 17 '22 02:10

Jesse Wolgamott


JsSpace.on('users', {
  index: function(){
    console.log('index action of users controller');
  }
});

that pattern implemented by render controller and action into body attribute then fetch them and execute the match function. js-namespace-rails

like image 37
falm Avatar answered Oct 17 '22 00:10

falm