Rails with backbone-rails: asset helpers (image_path) in EJS files

Question

I have a Rails 3.1 app that uses the codebrew/backbone-rails. In a .jst.ejs template, I would like to include an image, like so:

Answer 1

There is a way, actually, to chain a .jst.ejs.erb file, although it's fairly undocumented, and I only found it through looking at the EJS test cases. You can tell EJS to use {{ }} (or [% %] or whatever else you want) instead of <% %>, and then ERB won't try to evaluate your EJS calls.

Make sure to require EJS somewhere in your code (I just included gem 'ejs' in my Gemfile), and then create an initializer (I called it ejs.rb) that includes the following:

EJS.evaluation_pattern    = /\{\{([\s\S]+?)\}\}/
EJS.interpolation_pattern = /\{\{=([\s\S]+?)\}\}/

Then just make sure to rename your templates to .jst.ejs.erb, and replace your existing <% %> EJS-interpreted code with {{ }}. If you want to use something other than {{ }}, change the regular expressions in the initializer.

I wish there were an option in Sprockets to handle this through the config rather than having to explicitly include EJS, but as of the moment, there's no way to do that that I know of.