Rails 3: How to get image path in Controller?

Question

To get the image path in Controller I use the following method:

class AssetsController < ApplicationController
  def download(image_file_name)
    path = Rails.root.join("public", "images", image_file_name).to_s
    send_file(path, ...)
  end
end

Is there a better method to find the path ?

Answer 1

ActionController::Base.helpers.asset_path('missing_file.jpg')

Access Asset Path from Rails Controller

Answer 2

Not sure if this was added as early as Rails 3, but is definitely working in Rails 3.1. You can now access the view_context from your controller, which allows you to call methods that are normally accessible to your views:

class AssetsController < ApplicationController
  def download(image_file_name)
    path = view_context.image_path(image_file_name)
    # ... use path here ...
  end
end

Note that this will give you the publicly accessible path (e.g.: "/assets/foobar.gif"), not the local filesystem path.