CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railshelper
jpw
jpw

Reputation: 19257

in rails, where is right place to put methods that need to be available 'anywhere'

I have lots of little utility methods (such as for reformatting or parsing simple objects like strings) I have been putting in ApplicationHelper.

However, ApplicationHelper methods apparently cannot be accessed by class methods in a model.

There is a workaround, which is to sprinkle thoughout my project:

include ApplicationHelper # needed to use apphelper method in instance method
extend ApplicationHelper # needed to use apphelper method in class method

and it seems to work. But it seems like a kludge.

Is there a better place to put utility methods so they can be accessed from anywhere in my project - view, controller method, model instance metho, model class method?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 877

Answers (1)

deefour
deefour

Reputation: 35370

This is what lib/ is for. I have a file at lib/deefour.rb with

require "deefour/core_ext"

module Deefour; end

I put custom methods in lib/deefour/helpers.rb

module Deefour
  module Helpers
    extend self

    def some_method
      # ...
    end
  end
end

and core monkey patches in lib/deefour/core_ext.rb

class String
  def my_custom_string_method(str)
    # ...
  end
end

In config/initializers/deefour.rb I put

require "deefour"

In your config/application.rb make sure you have

config.autoload_paths += Dir["#{config.root}/lib"]

Finally, in ApplicationController (for controllers), ApplicationHelper (for views), and wherever else I need it (ie. a specific model here and there) I simply do

include ::Deefour::Helpers

Upvotes: 5

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