Rails 3.1: Dynamic linking to images in the asset pipeline?

Question

I have ~ 500+ flag images that I previously kept in public/images/flags/ and public/images/flags_small/. For each country in my Country model, I store the :iso_code, which is the same as the name of the flag image that corresponds to it. For example, mx.png is the name of the Mexican flag because mx is the two-letter ISO code for Mexico.

I previously had a helper method that would return the html to display the image based on the iso code of the country and whether I wanted the large or small flag.

With Rails 3.1, to comply with the asset pipeline, I'm under the impression that those images should go into the app/assets/images folder. Following from this:

1. Can I maintain the subfolders therein?
2. How do I use image_tag to display the appropriate images?

Edit: solution The answer below was correct, but I didn't want to type that much code each time,so I created two helper methods:

  def flag(country)
    image_tag('/assets/flags/' + country.iso_code.downcase + '.png')
  end

  def small_flag(country)
    image_tag('/assets/flag_small/' + country.iso_code.downcase + '.png')
  end

Answer 1

As a quick solution to load images dynamically for Rails 5 (from a resource other than assets pipeline), imagine you have a controller called car.

1. add a new action (e.g. our action is called image) in your controller;

   def image
      path = "C:/pics/.../test.jpg" # just a sample path to test
      send_file path, :content_type => 'image/jpg', :disposition => 'inline'
   end
   

2. add the new route to your action in routes.rb;

   get '/img', to: "car#image"
   

3. and finally in your ERB file, create an image tag with;

   <div>
       <%= image_tag url_for(:controller => "home", :action => "image") %>
   </div>
   

This is just to test the basics and you can make it parametrized (to load the image based on id, name, etc.)

Answer 2

1. Yes, you can

2. For example: <%= image_tag 'flags/uk.gif' %>