Question

I’m using

Ruby version              1.8.7
Rails version             3.0.3

I have a method called alive in every model of my rails app:

  def alive
    where('deleter is null')  
  end   

I don’t want to copy this code in every model so I made a /lib/life_control.rb

module LifeControl    
  def alive
    where('deleter is null')  
  end   

  def dead
    where('deleter is not null')  
  end    
end

and in my model (for example client.rb) I wrote:

class Client < ActiveRecord::Base
  include LifeControl   
end

and in my config/enviroment.rb I wrote this line:

require 'lib/life_control'

but now I get a no method error:

NoMethodError in
ClientsController#index

undefined method `alive' for
#<Class:0x10339e938>

app/controllers/clients_controller.rb:10:in
`index'

what am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

include will treat those methods as instance methods, not class methods. What you want to do is this:

module LifeControl    
  module ClassMethods
    def alive
      where('deleter is null')  
    end   

    def dead
      where('deleter is not null')  
    end    
  end

  def self.included(receiver)
    receiver.extend ClassMethods
  end
end

This way, alive and dead will be available on the class itself, not instances thereof.