Adding a new class

rubyonrails-talk
1

If I want to add a class so I can create instances of that class in a controller, where do I put the code to create the class?

There. I said it. It's embarrassing to admit that I don't know the answer to that question and it illustrates my poor understanding of the overall RoR framework structure. So, if anyone can also point me to something I could read that would enlighten me on the overall RoR framework structure, I would be appreciative of that as well.

Thanks for any input.

         ... doug

2

doug wrote:

If I want to add a class so I can create instances of that class in a controller, where do I put the code to create the class?

If the class is not an ActiveRecord model, then place it in a file in the application's "lib" directory. The filename should be the lower-cased version of the class name with words separated by underscores (MyClass => lib/my_class.rb). When you access "MyClass", Rails will automatically know how to find the definition and load it in.

3

I'm not entirely sure I've understood the question, but if you class is called Foo, then it should live in app/models/foo.rb You can then call Foo.create or Foo.new from anywhere you want. If you want your own methods for creating new instance you could write

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base   def self.make_me_a_new_one     .....   end end

and then call Foo.make_me_a_new_one from anywhere you want.

Fred

4

That works, but I prefer to separate models and new classes.

I usually put extra classes in "extras/" and then uncomment the
following in environment.rb:

   # Add additional load paths for your own custom dirs    config.load_paths += %W( #{RAILS_ROOT}/extras )

That way my new classes and the database-derived models are not
intermixed. It's up to you, really. You can use lib, or extras, so
long as rails can see it and your project makes sense to you and your
team.

-john