Question

I have several small classes that are in a single file in /app/models, similar to:

# /app/models/little_class.rb
class LittleClass; ...do stuff; end;
class AnotherLittleClass; ...do stuff; end;

Rails only seems geared to autoload classes in files reflecting the class name. So referencing AnotherLittleClass outside of the file raises “unitialized constant” errors as below until LittleClass is referenced:

irb(main):001:0> AnotherLittleClass 
NameError: uninitialized constant AnotherLittleClass
irb(main):02:0> LittleClass
=> LittleClass
irb(main):03:0> AnotherLittleClass
=> LittleClass2

It would be a pain and messy to split them into individual files. Is there a way to autoload these classes, so referencing AnotherLittleClass without LittleClass doesnt raise an error?

Answer 1

Try this trick:

1.9.2p312 :001 > AnotherLittleClass.new
# => NameError: uninitialized constant AnotherLittleClass
1.9.2p312 :002 > autoload :AnotherLittleClass, File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/app/models/little_class.rb"
# => nil 
1.9.2p312 :003 > AnotherLittleClass.new
# => #<AnotherLittleClass:0xa687d24>