[ruby-on-rails] Rails 4 image-path, image-url and asset-url no longer work in SCSS files

Are we supposed to use something else aside from image-url and others in Rails 4? They return different values that don't seem to make sense. If I have logo.png in /app/assets/images/logo.png and I do the following, this is what I get:

image-url("logo.png") -> url("/images/logo.png") #obviously doesn't work
image-path("logo.png") -> "/images/logo.png"
asset-url("logo.png") -> url("/logo.png")

Of course none of these work because they need at least /assets in front.

UPDATE: Actually, I just noticed, how do I access images in Rails 4? I have an image at /app/assets/images/logo.png. But if I go to any of the following URLs, I still don't see my image:

http://localhost:3000/assets/logo.png
http://localhost:3000/assets/images/logo.png
http://localhost:3000/logo.png
http://localhost:3000/images/logo.png

UPDATE 2: The only way I can bring up my logo.png is by moving it into the /app/assets/stylesheets directory and then pulling up:

http://localhost:3000/assets/logo.png

I just found out, that by using asset_url helper you solve that problem.

asset_url("backgrounds/pattern.png", image)

I had a similar problem, trying to add a background image with inline css. No need to specify the images folder due to the way asset sync works.

This worked for me:

background-image: url('/assets/image.jpg');

Your first formulation, image_url('logo.png'), is correct. If the image is found, it will generate the path /assets/logo.png (plus a hash in production). However, if Rails cannot find the image that you named, it will fall back to /images/logo.png.

The next question is: why isn't Rails finding your image? If you put it in app/assets/images/logo.png, then you should be able to access it by going to http://localhost:3000/assets/logo.png.

If that works, but your CSS isn't updating, you may need to clear the cache. Delete tmp/cache/assets from your project directory and restart the server (webrick, etc.).

If that fails, you can also try just using background-image: url(logo.png); That will cause your CSS to look for files with the same relative path (which in this case is /assets).

I just had this issue myself. 3 points that will hopefully help:

• If you place images in your app/assets/images directory, then you should be able to call the image directly with no prefix in the path. ie. image_url('logo.png')
• Depending on where you use the asset will depend on the method. If you are using it as a background-image: property, then your line of code should be background-image: image-url('logo.png'). This works for both less and sass stylesheets. If you are using it inline in the view, then you will need to use the built in image_tag helper in rails to output your image. Once again, no prefixing <%= image_tag 'logo.png' %>
• Lastly, if you are precompiling your assets, run rake assets:precompile to generate your assets, or rake assets:precompile RAILS_ENV=production for production, otherwise, your production environment will not have the fingerprinted assets when loading the page.

Also for those commands in point 3 you will need to prefix them with bundle exec if you are running bundler.

for stylesheets: url(asset_path('image.jpg'))

In case anyone arrives looking for how to generate a relative path from the rails console

ActionView::Helpers::AssetTagHelper
image_path('my_image.png')
=> "/images/my_image.png"

Or the controller

include ActionView::Helpers::AssetTagHelper
image_path('my_image.png')
=> "/images/my_image.png"

Rails 4.0.0 will look image defined with image-url in same directory structure with your css file.

For example, if your css in assets/stylesheets/main.css.scss, image-url('logo.png') becomes url(/assets/logo.png).

If you move your css file to assets/stylesheets/cpanel/main.css.scss, image-url('logo.png') becomes /assets/cpanel/logo.png.

If you want to use image directly under assets/images directory, you can use asset-url('logo.png')