useful sinatra template route snippet

gistfile1.rb

# use this snippet for routes that are partly dynamic, partly static.
# For example your jquery.js is static. With this route Sinatra will check
# your public dir and if it finds it there, jquery.js will be served.
# if not, the views dir will be searched. If found it's served as compiuled coffee script
# if not you will get a 404. Seems useful to me...
# btw, namelessjohn remined me that checking for the file first is good because then you
# won't create expensive and possibly leaking symbols of files that don't exist.
# also, we set last_modified which is good for caching.

get '/assets/js/:file.js' do
  halt 404 unless File.exist?("views/#{params[:file]}.coffee")
  time = File.stat("views/#{params[:file]}.coffee").ctime
  last_modified(time)
  coffee params[:file].intern
end