Question

I’ve been told that the helpers are just for functions that are needed by the views.

Where should I put in functions that are used commonly by models? What about controllers?

What’s the convention to place commonly used functions that will be used in:

1) models

2) views

3) controllers

Problem: Creating a module in lib to hold the functions and including the module in a class would create a boat-load of instance methods for the class.

Problem: What about functions that are common and needed in all three?

Answer 1

• for Controllers – put common methods in application_controller.rb
• for Views – put common methods in application_helper.rb
• for Models – monkeypatch ActiveRecord::Base to include common methods OR write a module with common model methods and include it in the models that need it OR do it in OOP way by subclassing ActiveRecord::Base with your abstract class, then inheriting all your models from this class.

To use common methods in both Model and Controller, do one of the following:

• Write a plain ruby class, put it in /lib or elsewhere, just make sure it’s loaded, then require it when you need to use its methods.
• Extract common functionality to a gem, install it, require it when you need it. Publish it to rubygems if it’s something valuable.