Use fancybox with rails 3.1/4 asset pipeline.

This gem vendors jquery fancybox 2 for Rails 3.1/4 and greater. The files will be added to the asset pipeline and available for you to use.

First add the following lines to your applications Gemfile:

gem 'jquery-rails'
gem 'fancybox2-rails', '~> 0.2.8'

Then run bundle install to update your application's bundle.

Now you need to edit your app/assets/javascripts/application.js file and add the following line:

//= require jquery
//= require fancybox

And then edit your app/assets/stylesheets/application.css file to look something like:

/*
 *= require_self
 *= require fancybox
 *= require_tree .
 */

You'll need to restart your Rails server and that's it!

With the gem installed and included in your asset manifests, you can now use fancybox as you normally would.

$(document).ready(function() {
  $("a.fancybox").fancybox();
});

This gem is based on the original gem for Fancybox 1.x by Chris Mytton.

Please be aware that you'll need to purchase a license if you intend to use fancybox2 for commercial purposes.