# Paths to images

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/paths-to-images/106181>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 7, 2007, 6:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/paths-to-images/106181 "2007-06-07T06:33:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Serengeti](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@Serengeti](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Serengeti)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2007, 6:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/paths-to-images/106181/1 "2007-06-07T06:33:13Z")

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I am having trouble figuring out the “right” way to specify the path  
to an image when it is an attribute of something other than an image  
tag.

For example, I see that image\_tag(“myimage.png”) automatically knows  
to look in the public/images directory.

How do I accomplish the same thing for other tags? For example, my  
layout has:

Also, in my css file:

tr#logobar { background-image:url(“logo\_bg.gif”) }

In these cases it seems that specifying the image name is not enough.

First, I tried a relative path (“images/logo\_bg.gif”) but this failed.

A full path worked (“/images/logo\_bg.gif”) worked, but this causes  
problems for deployment.

My server has the application root in a subdirectory. In other words,  
my application is in:

[http://my.server.com/myapp](http://my.server.com/myapp)

All of the places where I had “/images/logo\_bg.gif” fail on the  
server. I have to manually change them to “/myapp/logo\_bg.gif” for  
them to work.

It doesn’t seem like manually updating those links every time I want  
to deploy a new version is the right way to do this.

What am I missing here?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Serengeti](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@Serengeti](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Serengeti)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2007, 2:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/paths-to-images/106181/2 "2007-06-07T14:21:54Z")

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Serengeti wrote:

> First, I tried a relative path (“images/logo\_bg.gif”) but this failed.

Image references in CSS should be done relative to the document  
containing the css. So if you have a stylesheet in the standard Rails  
stylesheets directory, images should be…

…/images/foo.jpg

I’d avoid putting image-referencing style data in your layouts, save  
this for stylesheets, it saves a _lot_ of hassle when working out paths,  
especially if your routing configuration ever changes.

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**Author:** ![Serengeti](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@Serengeti](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Serengeti)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2007, 3:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/paths-to-images/106181/3 "2007-06-07T15:44:27Z")

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Thanks for the advice. I did as you suggested and everything appears  
to work fine.

FYI to any other newbies out there like me – be sure to budget as  
much time for deploying from your development machine to your  
production machine as you spent writing your application (more, if  
your application is pretty simple).

I suspect that this is a one-time problem. Once I get my first app up-  
and-running I suspect deploying additional apps will be easy.

On Jun 7, 7:21 am, Douglas S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)