Question

This is an evolving issue related to a previous posting I made…

I am playing around some – to try to learn how the /lib/ directory in Rails works – and how to reference variables defined in the /lib/ directory for use in a view.

I have a file called helloworld.rb and it’s saved in a /lib/hellotest/ directory in Rails.

The helloworld.rb file has the following code:

module HelloWorld
  def hello
    @howdy = "Hello World!"
  end
end

I want to be able to display the results of this method on a view called index.html.erb, so I include the following code in the index_helper.erb file:

module IndexHelper
  require 'helloworld'
end

I have learned that I need to include the following line of code in the /config/application.rb file:

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

Also, I include the following code on the view index.html.erb:

<%= @howdy %>

I think I may have found something that is causing problems. I didn’t want to load the entire /lib/ directory at startup so I put the file in a subdirectory called /lib/hellotest/. I’ve read there are some issues with how Rails interprets module/class naming conventions in the lib folder, but I can’t quite figure it out. I see a good resource regarding this possible solution to my problem on William B Harding’s Blog, on point 2 – but I can’t quite get my arms around this solution as it pertains to my problem.

Any advice please?

What am I missing?

Answer 1

I’d suggest that unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, follow the conventional naming for modules and classes (as described in the link you provided). Rename helloworld.rb to hello_world.rb, move it into lib, and change your autoload_paths to:

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

Finally, change require 'hello_world' to require 'hello_world' in your IndexHelper module. It should then load normally.