This plugin it no longer maintained, I recommend using the Sprockets gem which allows you to maintain separate javascript files for easy development while concatenating them into one file at run time to best utilise browser caching. If you still wish to use this plugin and want to make changes please fork a copy.
* On rails 2.1 and above run
script/plugin install git://github.com/kernow/javascript_auto_include.git
Add the following to the head of your template file
<%= javascript_auto_include_tags %>
Now each time the template is loaded javascript files in the public/javascripts/views folder that correspond to the name of the current controller or view will be auto loaded. It's also possible for the same javascript file to be loaded by multiple views by adding the name of each view to the filename separated by the "-" character, e.g. to load a javascript file in the new and edit views create a file named new-edit.js. Any number of views can be strung together using this naming convention. For example:
/public
/javascripts
/views
users.js
/users
edit.js
roles.js
/accounts
show-new-edit-create.js
show.js
Assuming the above file structure loading each of the following urls would include:
mydomain.com/users # includes users.js
mydomain.com/users/edit/1 # includes users.js and edit.js
mydomain.com/users/show/1 # includes users.js
mydomain.com/roles # includes roles.js
mydomain.com/accounts # no files included
mydomain.com/accounts/show/1 # includes show.js and show-new-edit-create.js
mydomain.com/accounts/new # includes show-new-edit-create.js
mydomain.com/accounts/edit/1 # includes show-new-edit-create.js
mydomain.com/accounts/create # includes show-new-edit-create.js
http://kernowsoul.com/page/javascript_auto_include
Thanks to geoffgarside http://github.com/geoffgarside for also creating a version that can include the same file in multiple views. Some of the code comments are from his version as they are more concise than mine.