Where should Ruby monkey patches be placed within a Rails application?

Question

I am planning to use a Ruby module to add a function to the String class. http://snippets.aktagon.com/snippets/584-generating-word-n-grams-with-ruby

However, I don't know where to put Ruby modules so that every string object can use this function.

Where do I put modules in Rails?

Another possible duplicate http://stackoverflow.com/q/7490680/1290374 — Keith, Sep 10 '13 at 02:55

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 10 '13 at 02:53

3

Methods like this often go in the config/initializers directory, ruby files contained in that directory are automatically required when Rails boots up.

Another option is within lib, but then they'll have to be explicitly required somewhere.

See the Rails guide on Configuring Applications for more information.

answered Sep 10 '13 at 02:53

Daniel Vandersluis

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Putting the guts in `lib` and then a one-liner `require 'thing-in-lib'` in `config/initializers` seems to be a pretty common pattern. – mu is too short Sep 10 '13 at 03:57

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 10 '13 at 02:55

0

Put it in app/helpers with some name like common_methods.rb and then add it into your controller using require 'common_methods'. So that you can use the same function in all controllers.

edited Sep 10 '13 at 02:55

Mulan

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answered Sep 10 '13 at 02:52

Kiran

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Where should Ruby monkey patches be placed within a Rails application?

2 Answers2