# jQuery UI with Rails **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [May 10, 2009, 3:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/jquery-ui-with-rails/167603 "2009-05-10T03:53:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 3:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/jquery-ui-with-rails/167603/1 "2009-05-10T03:53:26Z")
This has to do more with Rails than jQuery so I am posting it here. I am using jQuery UI widgets in my application. One of the CSS file is called ui.theme.css which has references to background-image as shown below: .ui-widget-content .ui-icon {background-image: url(images/ui-icons\_222222\_256x240.png)/_{iconsContent}_/; } Following Rails conventions, I put the stylesheets in public/stylesheets and javascripts in public/javascripts directories. Trouble is: this creates problems in terms of background images not loading correctly, I have to change the aforementioned line to: .ui-widget-content .ui-icon {background-image: url(’/images/ui-icons\_222222\_256x240.png’)/_{iconsContent}_/; } In other words, put a forward slash “/” in front of the images and put the whole uri string in quotes for Rails to load it correctly. This seems like a lot of work for no good reason. Any advice on how to get around it without having to modify the CSS files? Thanks. Bharat ---
**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 5:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/jquery-ui-with-rails/167603/2 "2009-05-10T05:00:43Z")
Hi– On May 9, 2009, at 6:53 PM, Bharat R. wrote: > stylesheets > seems like a lot of work for no good reason. Any advice on how to get > around it without having to modify the CSS files? I don’t think it’s a Rails thing. I think it’s the way URLs are resolved into physical pathnames by Web servers. A document-relative URL is always (AFAIK) going to load the specified resource relative to the directory in which the current document exists by default. Because Rails “fakes” a rather deeper directory structure using routing, the only time a server will try to load a resource like images/ui- icons\_22222\_256x240.png from public/images is if your are looking at a document called ‘/’. There are several ways to approach this. I humbly call them the expensive way, the cheap-but-brittle way, and the Apache way. Expensive way: Put code in your routes.rb to snag the request for your ui-icons and map them to the correct directory. Why not? Because they all of a sudden become dynamic resources and expensive to serve. Cheap-but-brittle way: Make the change to the CSS and get on with it. That’s what I do and I believe it’s pretty common practice. When you upgrade versions, it’s brittle, shatters into a million pieces, but it’s easy to spot. Apache way: Write some keen rewrite rule that recognizes your jQ-UI resource and maps it to the correct location no matter where your document exists. Obviously there are variants for nginx and there might even be some keen Metal solution I haven’t thought of. But really, overthinking this one won’t get you to done much quicker. Good luck. ---
**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 4:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/jquery-ui-with-rails/167603/3 "2009-05-10T16:17:41Z")
Bharat R. wrote: > "Cheap-but-brittle way: Make the change to the CSS and get on with > it. > That’s what I do and I believe it’s pretty common practice. When you > upgrade versions, it’s brittle, shatters into a million pieces, but > it’s easy to spot. " I don’t remember: will affect URLs in CSS? I think not, but it might be worth a try. > Thank you. I will go with this route, already have. I can see that > Mr. Yahuda Katz has his work cut out for him for Rails 3.0. After > all, he is the jQuery man 🙂 I hope he makes jQuery a first class > Rails citizen instead of the rather unwelcome guest which it currently > is in Rails world. I’ve never used jQuery, but it seems to me that this would be a serious problem with the framework. I don’t think a general-purpose JS framework should have hard-coded image URLs in its stylesheets – that’s just way too brittle, for exactly the reasons you’re running into. I’ve been thinking about playing with jQuery, but this seems like such a bad idea that I wonder if I should even touch the framework! ## Best, Marnen Laibow-Koser [http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org) removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 7:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/jquery-ui-with-rails/167603/4 "2009-05-10T19:22:09Z")
I caution you not to jump to conclusions. This is due to jQuery UI themes that is not part of the core jQuery library. So you can still get a lot done without having to do what I had to do. Even without the CSS magic, the core functionality is working fine 🙂 But it is clear to me that either Rails or jQuery are not particularly tailored for each other at this point. Though, Yahuda Katz, who is now on Rails 3 core team as well as jQuery teams is bound to do something to make things better. On the plus side though, the jQuery API is so well designed and implemented that I am rather enjoying coding in client side Javascript which I did not particularly care for in the original Rails Javascript frameworks, Protoype and Scriptaculous 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 3:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/jquery-ui-with-rails/167603/5 "2009-05-10T15:31:06Z")
"Cheap-but-brittle way: Make the change to the CSS and get on with it. That’s what I do and I believe it’s pretty common practice. When you upgrade versions, it’s brittle, shatters into a million pieces, but it’s easy to spot. " Thank you. I will go with this route, already have. I can see that Mr. Yahuda Katz has his work cut out for him for Rails 3.0. After all, he is the jQuery man 🙂 I hope he makes jQuery a first class Rails citizen instead of the rather unwelcome guest which it currently is in Rails world.