Access Ruby on Rails 'public' directory without relative path

I have a flash object I wish to load and I believe the best pla开发者_运维知识库ce to store that asset is in the public directory. Suppose it's stored in public/flash, there must be a better way to path to the swf than what I've done below. Note the 'data' element, it has a relative path.

def create_vnc_object
  haml_tag :object, 
    :id => 'flash',
    :width => '100%', 
    :height => '100%',
    :type => 'application/x-shockwave-flash', 
    :data => '../../flash/flash.swf' do
      haml_tag :param, 
        :name => 'movie',
        :value => '../../flash/flash.swf'
  end
end

Is there some rails variable that points to public?

An alternative method is to extend ActionView::Helpers::AssetTagHelper, which is most useful if you're using asset servers. This is the module that already implements javascript_path and stylesheet_path. You could do it like this:

module ActionView
  module Helpers
    module AssetTagHelper
      def flash_movie_path(source)
        compute_public_path(source, 'flash', 'swf')
      end
      alias_method :path_to_flash_movie, :flash_movie_path
    end
  end
end

For reference, the documentation on ActionView::Helpers::AssetTagHelper.

Wouldn't this work?

def create_vnc_object
  haml_tag :object, 
    :id => 'flash',
    :width => '100%', 
    :height => '100%',
    :type => 'application/x-shockwave-flash', 
    :data => '/flash/flash.swf' do
      haml_tag :param, 
        :name => 'movie',
        :value => '/flash/flash.swf'
  end
end

Alternatively you could use the root_url as the prefix:

def create_vnc_object
  haml_tag :object, 
    :id => 'flash',
    :width => '100%', 
    :height => '100%',
    :type => 'application/x-shockwave-flash', 
    :data => root_url + 'flash/flash.swf' do
      haml_tag :param, 
        :name => 'movie',
        :value => root_url + 'flash/flash.swf'
  end
end

The latter works only if you have the root route in your routes.rb file. It will point to the root of your site (e.g. http://example.com/) which is basically the public folder.