Question

I have web.rb file that works fine. I wanted to move all require files in one requires.rb file and call this file from all my .rb files and use conditions based on a caller file name to require what is needed.

I tested it on ‘require pp’, ‘ruby-growl’ and and it worked fine. But sinatra won’t load if the require sinatra is in another file.

Can I have require sinatra in a different file? Or better in general can I have require in different file?

using

• ruby 1.8.7 (2010-08-16 patchlevel 302) [i386-mingw32]
• sinatra (1.3.2)

• gem 1.3.7

• running the scripts from dos window by ruby script_name.rb

Few first lines from my requires.rb are below. When I run web.rb I can see the text “loading web requires”. Note that I require ‘rubygems’ for all .rb files. If I comment `require ‘sinatra’ I get an error message ‘web.rb:17: uninitialized constant Rack (NameError)’. If the require is not commented ruby finishes without any message on the screen, no error message either.

called_from=caller[0].split(":")[0]
puts "loading web 'requires' for file: #{called_from} ..." if (["web"].any?{|s| called_from[s]})

require "c:\\edutester\\others\\settings.rb"

require 'rubygems'
require 'sinatra'           if (["web"].any?{|s| called_from[s]}) 

UPDATE

I simplified the test case. I have two files. If I use only test.rb and require in the file. Everything works fine. If I use test_require.rb file I can see “loading” text and I’d say that something is loading or something is processin because it takes a second or so to finish the test.rb

test.rb

#require "c:\\edutester\\playground\\test_require.rb"

require 'rubygems' 
require 'sinatra'


get '/' do

    "yes"
end

and test_require.rb

puts "loading..."
require 'rubygems' 
require 'sinatra'

---

Sinatra won’t load = I don’t get the usual

== Sinatra/1.3.2 has taken the stage on 4567 for development with backup from Thin 
>> Thin web server (v1.2.7 codename No Hup) 
>> Maximum connections set to 1024 
>> Listening on 0.0.0.0:4567, CTRL+C to stop 

and I cannot access the web server from a browser. And there is no message at all. Hm, there is one empty line

Answer 1

When you run a Sinatra program directly with something like ruby my_app.rb, Sinatra can start a web server automatically. Sinatra determines whether to run this built-in server by checking whether the :run setting is true.

The default for value :run is determined by checking if the :app_file setting is the same as the Ruby file being executed, i.e. $0.

Sinatra determines the default value for :app_file by using the first file that executes require 'sinatra'. In this case, when you have require 'sinatra' at the top of test.rb then :app_file is $0, so Sinatra starts the built-in server. When you use test_require.rb, $0 is test.rb, but the file to require Sinatra, and therfore :app_file, is test_require.rb, and as they don’t match the built-in server isn’t started.

To fix this you can explicitly set :app_file in your test.rb (or web.rb or wherever):

set :app_file, __FILE__

You’ll need to do this after you’ve required Sinatra. You could also directly set :run, although this would be less flexible as it would run the built-in server every time, which you wouldn’t want if you’re using config.ru for example:

enable :run

Although this should solve your problem, personally I think it would be better to keep the require 'sinatra' together with the Sinatra code.