Encoding issues in javascript files using rails asset pipeline

Question

I\'m using rails 3.1 and the asset pipeline (ruby 1.9.2).

I get the following error when trying to serve a javascript js.erb file that has utf-8 encoded

Answer 1

When loading a file, Ruby tries to "guess" its encoding. If no UTF-8 or any other non-ASCII characters are found, it uses US-ASCII as encoding for the file and throws an error if it suddenly encounters a non-ASCII character, which e.g. is loaded at run-time.

The best solution for this problem is to force Ruby to use a certain encoding by adding # encoding: utf-8 as the first line of a .rb file or <%# encoding: utf-8 %> if it's a .erb file.