rack-zippy

rack-zippy is a Rack middleware for serving static gzipped assets precompiled by the Rails asset pipeline into the public/assets directory. Use it on Heroku if you want to serve the precompiled gzipped assets to gzip-capable clients with sensible caching headers.

By default, Rails + Heroku will not serve *.gz assets even though they are generated at deploy time.

rack-zippy replaces the ActionDispatch::Static middleware used by Rails, which is not capable of serving the gzipped assets created by the rake assets:precompile task. rack-zippy will serve non-gzipped assets where they are not available or not supported by the requesting client.

For a fuller explanation of the how, why, and the kind of performance difference you can expect when using rack-zippy, see Serving Compressed Assets with Heroku and Rack-Zippy (thanks to Cheyne Wallace).

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'rack-zippy'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Add this line to config/application.rb:

config.middleware.swap(ActionDispatch::Static, Rack::Zippy::AssetServer)

Usage

Follow the installation instructions above and rack-zippy will serve any static assets, including gzipped assets, from your application's public/ directory and will respond with sensible caching headers.

Troubleshooting

'assert_index': No such middleware to insert before: ActionDispatch::Static (RuntimeError)

Check your environment (in config/environments/) does not have serve_static_assets set to false:

config.serve_static_assets = false # Oops! Should be set to true for rack-zippy

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Run tests (rake test)
4. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
5. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
6. Create new Pull Request

Releasing a new gem

1. Update pre-release version to the release version in lib/rack-zippy/version.rb, e.g. '1.0.1.pre' becomes '1.0.1'
2. Update CHANGELOG.md
3. Tests pass? (rake test)
4. Build the gem (rake build)
5. Release on rubygems.org (rake release)
6. Update version to the next pre-release version in lib/rack-zippy/version.rb, e.g. '1.0.1' becomes '1.0.2.pre'