use javascript in rails 3.2 without coffeescript

Question

I'm using Rails 3.2, It's set up for coffeescript. I know Coffeescript is an awesome language and it's not too hard to learn, but i'm JUST starting to wrap my head around Javascript and jQuery. So my question is this: Is there an easy way to set rails 3.2 up to use Javascript instead? At the moment, my jQuery is in <script></script> tags in my view (timeline/index.html.erb). I'd like to move it into a .js file. I tried changing the name of my timeline.js.coffee to just timeline.js and putting the jQuery in there, but I get Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL.

What should I do besides the obvious answer of "learn coffeescript"?

Answer 1

I was on the right track. To switch to javascript in rails 3.2 you only need to remove the .coffee extension. However, you also need to make sure you use // for comments instead of #

//# Place all the behaviors and hooks related to the matching controller here.
//# All this logic will automatically be available in application.js.
//# You can use CoffeeScript in this file: http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/

Answer 2

Manifest Files and Directives
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html#manifest-files-and-directives

add js files in app/assets/javascripts, then add the files in application.js

---

your js file

alert("here");

application.js

//= require_tree .
or
//= require your_js_file_name

---

then, it will be picked up from the code below in your app/views/layouts/application.html.erb

<%= javascript_include_tag "application" %>