edit this page Directives

Each file with content type application/javascript or text/css is processed by the DirectiveProcessor. The DirectiveProcessor parses the head of these files for special comments starting with an equals sign.

/* CSS
 *= require foo.css
 *= depend_on bar.css
 */

# CoffeeScript
#= require foo.coffee

// Javascript
//= require foo.js

The arguments for each directive are split by the Bourne Shell's rules. This means you have to quote arguments which contain spaces with either single or double quotes.

//= require "some name with spaces.js"

require

Usage:

require <path>

The require directive takes an asset path as argument, processes the asset and puts the dependency's contents before the asset's contents.

The path can also start with ./, which skips the load path for the path resolution and looks up the file in the same path as the current asset.

depend_on

Usage:

depend_on <path>

Defines that the path is a dependency of the current asset, but does not process anything. Assets defined this way get considered when the last modified time is calculated, but the contents get not prepended.

require_tree

Usage:

require_tree <path>

Requires all files found in the directory specified by path.

For example, if you have a directory for all individual widgets and a widget base prototype, then you could require_tree the widgets/ directory. This way every developer can just drop a file into the widgets/ directory without having to maintain a massive list of individual assets.

// index.js
//= require ./widget_base
//= require_tree ./widgets