gistfile1.rb

# Is this a bad idea? I really dislike having to type 
# Rails.application.routes.url_helpers.foo_path in my javascript templates.
#
# This turns it into SomeApp.routes.foo_path, which still is a bit much, but
# means it's less work.

module SomeApp
  # Public: Shortcut to access named routes when needed. This is targeted at
  # asset-pipeline templates, so we can use these helpers from javascript
  # without all the ceremony.
  #
  # Returns a module with the route helpers as singleton methods.
  def self.routes
    Rails.application.routes.url_helpers
  end
end

How about:

class Routes
  def self.method_missing(helper, *args, &block)
    Rails.application.routes.url_helpers.send helper, args
  end
end

And then you can do Routes.foo_path.

That's slower (method_missing is a lot slower than dispatching methods), and it's the same approach at heart, so it's still not something I like a lot. I was thinking something along the way of including a routes helper method in the sprockets environment that delegates to this object. Then I would do something like:

<a href="{{ expand "<%= routes.foo_path("{foo}") %>" }}">…</a>

Which feels slightly less hacky than

<a href="{{ expand "<%= SomeApp.routes.foo_path("{foo}") %>" }}">…</a>