Why are my breadcrumbs styled differently locally than on heroku when using breadcrumbs_on_rails gem?

Question

I added the breadcrumbs_on_rails gem to my Rails app and set it up and it works great. Then I pushed my changes to heroku and while the breadcrumbs still function the same way, they are styled differently. I prefer the styling that I am getting when I run the server locally. Here is the difference:

The first one is Heroku and the second one is the local one that I prefer. I am also using the twitter-bootstrap-rails gem and I read in the following github link (twitter-bootstrap-rails) that breadcrumbs_on_rails is unnecessary with twitter-bootstrap-rails because you can call the same helper methods using twitter-bootstrap. Here is a screenshot from the link: Nonetheless, even when I take the breadcrumbs_on_rails gem out of my gemfile and restart the local server, the styling remains the same (the way I like it) and it doesn't change on Heroku either. Any ideas of what might be happening and/or how to fix it so that my local styling is what gets displayed when it is deployed to Heroku?

Answer 1

Yay, I figured it out! Here's my best attempt at an assessment of what was happening and then I'll follow with what I did to get it working the way I wanted it to. It seems that in fact the twitter-bootstrap-rails gem (henceforth referenced as twitter bootstrap) does have its own version of breadcrumbs and that in my local environment, a hybrid variety of breadcrumbs was being used between twitter bootstrap and the breadcrumbs_on_rails gem (henceforth referenced as breadcrumbs). So I was getting the nice twitter bootstrap styling for the breadcrumbs but also getting the additional helper methods provided with the breadcrumbs gem (like adding default breadcrumbs at the top of each form controller, outside of any methods).

It seems that in Heroku, however, the breadcrumbs gem was being used exclusively, meaning that I was getting the different, less desirable (to me), styling for the breadcrumbs, and also of course all of the helper methods.

So what I finally came to as a solution to get things working the way I wanted was to:

a) remove the breadcrumbs gem from my gemfile AND

b) move the twitter bootstrap gem out of the assets group and into the main flow of the gemfile

c) I also had to move the helper methods I had at the top of some of my form controllers to within the action methods on the form controllers. I was still able to be DRY about it by putting the common ones in a method that I could call from each action to which they applied, as in the following:

class WebDeveloperJobsController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @web_developer = WebDeveloper.singleton
    @jobs = @web_developer.sorted_jobs
    add_necessary_breadcrumbs
  end

  def show
    @job = WebDeveloperJob.find(params[:id])
    add_necessary_breadcrumbs
    add_breadcrumb "Job", web_developer_job_path(@job)
  end

  def add_necessary_breadcrumbs
    add_breadcrumb "Education", web_developer_trainings_path
    add_breadcrumb "Projects", web_developer_projects_path
    add_breadcrumb "Endorsements", web_developer_endorsements_path
    add_breadcrumb "Videos", web_developer_videos_path
    add_breadcrumb "Jobs", web_developer_jobs_path
  end
end