Question

Both objects seem to be nil inside of ‘rails console’.

Why is that?

Actually now Rails works:

puts Rails.env
/path/to/my/project

but for config:

puts config.root

NameError: undefined local variable or method `config' for #<Object:0x1001dd2a0>
    from (irb):8

Answer 1

There is no global config method. If you’re copying this from your environment files in Rails 2, note that these are actually evaluated within a certain context.

To get to the config object from your console, try one of the following:

For Rails 3 and above:

Rails.application.config

For Rails 2.x:

Rails.configuration

If you need to get your project’s root directory (not sure if this is actually what you’re trying to accomplish), you can do the following in Rails 2 and above:

Rails.root