Rails 4 Assets Bug, not loading images - css

Question

To cut a long story short, because I wasted enough time with this stupid framework.
I want to use pure CSS, no SCSS, no css.erb, no mumbo-jumpo that adds more overhead parsing, even if it is 2ms more.
My production.rb file has (I am using webrick):
Properties::Application.configure do
# Settings specified here will take precedence over those in config/application.rb.
# Code is not reloaded between requests.
config.cache_classes = true
# Eager load code on boot. This eager loads most of Rails and
# your application in memory, allowing both thread web servers
# and those relying on copy on write to perform better.
# Rake tasks automatically ignore this option for performance.
config.eager_load = true
# Full error reports are disabled and caching is turned on.
config.consider_all_requests_local = false
config.action_controller.perform_caching = true
# Enable Rack::Cache to put a simple HTTP cache in front of your application
# Add `rack-cache` to your Gemfile before enabling this.
# For large-scale production use, consider using a caching reverse proxy like nginx, varnish or squid.
# config.action_dispatch.rack_cache = true
# Disable Rails's static asset server (Apache or nginx will already do this).
config.serve_static_assets = true
# Compress JavaScripts and CSS.
config.assets.js_compressor = :uglifier
# config.assets.css_compressor = :sass
# Do not fallback to assets pipeline if a precompiled asset is missed.
config.assets.compile = false
# Generate digests for assets URLs.
config.assets.digest = true
# Version of your assets, change this if you want to expire all your assets.
config.assets.version = '1.0'
# Specifies the header that your server uses for sending files.
# config.action_dispatch.x_sendfile_header = "X-Sendfile" # for apache
# config.action_dispatch.x_sendfile_header = 'X-Accel-Redirect' # for nginx
# Force all access to the app over SSL, use Strict-Transport-Security, and use secure cookies.
# config.force_ssl = true
# Set to :debug to see everything in the log.
config.log_level = :info
# Prepend all log lines with the following tags.
# config.log_tags = [ :subdomain, :uuid ]
# Use a different logger for distributed setups.
# config.logger = ActiveSupport::TaggedLogging.new(SyslogLogger.new)
# Use a different cache store in production.
# config.cache_store = :mem_cache_store
# Enable serving of images, stylesheets, and JavaScripts from an asset server.
# config.action_controller.asset_host = "http://assets.example.com"
# Precompile additional assets.
# application.js, application.css, and all non-JS/CSS in app/assets folder are already added.
# config.assets.precompile += %w( search.js )
# Ignore bad email addresses and do not raise email delivery errors.
# Set this to true and configure the email server for immediate delivery to raise delivery errors.
# config.action_mailer.raise_delivery_errors = false
# Enable locale fallbacks for I18n (makes lookups for any locale fall back to
# the I18n.default_locale when a translation can not be found).
config.i18n.fallbacks = true
# Send deprecation notices to registered listeners.
config.active_support.deprecation = :notify
# Disable automatic flushing of the log to improve performance.
# config.autoflush_log = false
# Use default logging formatter so that PID and timestamp are not suppressed.
config.log_formatter = ::Logger::Formatter.new
end
Now I have a simple css file under assets/stylesheets called general.css, and it contains this simple line:
html{
background-image:url('homepage_bg_1.jpg');
}
Now I have tried:
background-image:url('assets/homepage_bg_1.jpg');
background-image:url('public/assets/homepage_bg_1.jpg');
background-image:url('public/homepage_bg_1.jpg');
background-image:url('assets/images/homepage_bg_1.jpg');
Nothing works!! It browser still looks for a 'homepage_bg_1.jpg' image which is normal, but in my public assets folder I have 'homepage_bg_1-de4a0800c51d578f152fe5ca821136a6.jpg'.
I am using RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake assets:precompile to precompile my assets.
Now I would assume that Rails is not stupid enough, and will look for that file. But it doesnt. Can somebody just tell me what's wrong with this framework? Should I open an issue in Github? Is the framework trying to make us not use CSS?

Answer 1

If you don't want Rails to touch any of the assets you can put them in the public directory.
That way you won't have any fingerprinting or unwanted preprocessing. They will be served "as is". You don't have to mess with the Rails settings or do any precompilation.
And if you some day choose to use the asset pipeline again you can use both methods.

Answer 2

If you want to use fingerprinted assets in your stylesheets and javascript files you NEED preprocessing on those assets in order to use the asset pipeline helper methods. Rather than ranting and raving try and read the ever-so-informative guides.
You've rightly identified that your asset is compiled with a fingerprint, this is for asset expiry and is an integral part of the pipeline. In order to interpolate the correct filename to your other assets you need to use the helpers provided. For ERB use asset_path, and with Sass you have image-url/image-path/asset-url/asset-path/etc depending on your requirement.

Answer 3

Have you tried using the image helpers in your CSS for it to reference the digest version of your image?
Something like...
html {
background-image: image-url('homepage_bg_1.jpg');
}
This will put a reference to the image with the digest string appended to the name automatically for you.