Is it possible to access Rails.env somehow directly through javascript/jQuery?
I could put something in the DOM and then read it, but that seems a bit hackish. Specifically, I'd like to be able to make a conditional statement in the javascript based on whether the environment is testing, development, staging, or production.
Rails is on the server. jQuery is on the client. You must somehow supply the information from the server to the client. The typical way is outputting a bit of JavaScript using server-side code, like so:
<script>
var environment = "<%= Rails.env %>";
</script>
...assuming the value won't have double quotes in it. Rails presumably has an equivalent to PHP's json_encode you could use if necessary.
Turns out this is possible without reading from the DOM; the solution for me was to insert the environment variable into the js file before precompilation.
Change myfile.js.coffee to myfile.js.coffee.erb and then insert with Ruby same as in a view, etc:
environment = "<%= Rails.env %>"