Question

I have several models that need to call a method that takes a particular hash as input. Where should I declare this hash to keep things DRY, and how can I then use it in multiple models?

The hash will be the same for all uses. Specifically, it’s just a hash of connection details that I want to pass to a call to establish_connection. I realize that that method takes a URL, though I’m still on rails 3.1, and that method was not made available until a little later.

Instead of repeating the following in five models, I just want to call something like establish_connection(legacy_db_connection_hash).

establish_connection(
  :adapter  => 'mysql',
  :host     => ENV['LEGACY_DATABASE_HOST'],
  :username => ENV['LEGACY_DATABASE_USERNAME'],
  :password => ENV['LEGACY_DATABASE_PASSWORD'],
  :database => ENV['LEGACY_DATABASE_NAME']
)

I was thinking that perhaps there’s a way to do it via /lib, but I’m really not sure how to go about it.

Thank you for your time!

Answer 1

It should go into a module.

For example, declare a module Foo in the file lib/foo.rb (and don’t forget self. in front of the method name):

module Foo
  # returns a hash of connection settings
  def self.settings
    {
      adapter: 'mysql2',
      database: ENV['LEGACY_DATABASE_NAME'],
      username: ENV['LEGACY_DATABASE_USERNAME'],
      password: ENV['LEGACY_DATABASE_PASSWORD'],
      host:     ENV['LEGACY_DATABASE_HOST']
    }
  end
end

Foo.settings will be available when you include Foo in your models.

Also, make sure to add the lib directory to config.autoload_paths in config/application.rb, so that lib/foo.rb is read and its contained Foo module is loaded:

config.autoload_paths += %W(#{config.root}/lib)