Question

When my system requires two classes or modules of the same name, what can I do to specify which I mean?

I’m using rails (new to it), and one of my models is named “Thread”. When I try to refer to the class “Thread” in thread_controller.rb, the system returns some other constant of the same name.

<thread.rb>
class Thread < ActiveRecord::Base

  def self.some_class_method
  end

end

<thread_controller.rb>
class ThreadController < ApplicationController

  def index
    require '../models/thread.rb'
    @threads = Thread.find :all
  end

end

When I try Thread.find(), I get an error saying that Thread has no method named find. When I access Thread.methods, I don’t find my some_class_method method among them.

Any help? (And don’t bother posting “just name your model something else.” It’s not helpful to point out obvious compromises.)

Answer 1

You could put your app into its own namespace.

<my_app/thread.rb>
module MyApp
  class Thread
  end
end