I have a flash object I wish to load and I belive the best place to store that asset is in the public directory. Suppose it's stored in public/flash, there must be a better way to path to the swf than what I've done below. Note the 'data' element, it has a relative path. def create_vnc_object haml_tag :object, :id => 'flash', :width => '100%', :height => '100%', :type => 'application/x-shockwave-flash', :data => '../../flash/flash.swf' do haml_tag :param, :name => 'movie', :value => '../../flash/flash.swf' end end Is there some rails variable that points to public?