Rails tip: Automatically link a controller's stylesheet

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Rails tip: Automatically link a controller’s stylesheet

This is a simple application helper I wrote to reduce the tediousness of linking stylesheets for each controller. It will link the controller’s stylesheet (located at public/stylesheets/[controller_name].css) if it exists but it won’t complain if it doesn’t. I use it in pretty much every Rails project to keep things organized. It’s super simple to set up.

Simply add this to your application helper (located at app/helpers/application_helper.rb):

def controller_stylesheet_link_tag
  stylesheet = "#{params[:controller]}.css"
    
  if File.exists?(File.join(Rails.public_path, 'stylesheets', stylesheet))
    stylesheet_link_tag stylesheet
  end
end

…and put this in your application layout (located at app/views/layouts/application.html.erb):