Can models be put in subfolders?

rubyonrails-talk
1

I'm looking for ways to make my project file hierarchy look a bit neater, by joining what can be joined and removing what can be removed. I know now how to put controllers into subfolders (see my admin), but what about models?

Here's what I got so far:

Rakefile app app/controllers app/controllers/about_controller.rb app/controllers/admin app/controllers/admin/ads_controller.rb app/controllers/admin/application_controller.rb app/controllers/admin/forums_controller.rb app/controllers/admin/moderatorships_controller.rb app/controllers/admin/sites_controller.rb app/controllers/admin/users_controller.rb app/controllers/ads_controller.rb app/controllers/application.rb app/controllers/forums_controller.rb app/controllers/main_controller.rb app/controllers/posts_controller.rb app/controllers/radio_controller.rb app/controllers/sessions_controller.rb app/controllers/sites_controller.rb app/controllers/topics_controller.rb app/controllers/users_controller.rb app/helpers app/helpers/about_helper.rb app/helpers/account_helper.rb app/helpers/ads_helper.rb app/helpers/application_helper.rb app/helpers/forums_helper.rb app/helpers/main_helper.rb app/helpers/moderatorships_helper.rb app/helpers/posts_helper.rb app/helpers/radio_helper.rb app/helpers/sessions_helper.rb app/helpers/sites_helper.rb app/helpers/topics_helper.rb app/helpers/users_helper.rb app/models app/models/ad.rb app/models/author.rb app/models/category.rb app/models/forum.rb app/models/mail.rb app/models/moderatorship.rb app/models/monitorship.rb app/models/parent_category.rb app/models/post.rb app/models/site.rb app/models/topic.rb app/models/user app/models/user.rb app/models/user/activation.rb app/models/user/editable.rb app/models/user/posting.rb app/models/user/states.rb app/models/user/validation.rb app/models/user_observer.rb app/views app/views/about app/views/about/main.html.erb app/views/about/privacy.html.erb app/views/about/safety.html.erb app/views/about/scams.html.erb app/views/about/terms.html.erb app/views/admin app/views/admin/ads app/views/admin/ads/categories.html.erb app/views/admin/ads/new_category.html.erb app/views/admin/ads/show.html.erb app/views/admin/forums app/views/admin/forums/_form.html.erb app/views/admin/forums/edit.html.erb app/views/admin/forums/new.html.erb app/views/admin/forums/show.html.erb app/views/admin/main app/views/admin/main/index.html.erb app/views/admin/sites app/views/admin/sites/_form.html.erb app/views/admin/sites/edit.html.erb app/views/admin/sites/new.html.erb app/views/admin/sites/show.html.erb app/views/admin/users app/views/admin/users/show.html.erb app/views/ads app/views/ads/_ad.html.erb app/views/ads/_category.html.erb app/views/ads/_form.html.erb app/views/ads/_form_header.html.erb app/views/ads/_parent.html.erb app/views/ads/_show_parent.html.erb app/views/ads/edit.html.erb app/views/ads/feed.atom.builder app/views/ads/feed.rss.builder app/views/ads/list.html.erb app/views/ads/manage.html.erb app/views/ads/new.html.erb app/views/ads/post.html.erb app/views/ads/select_category.rjs app/views/ads/show.html.erb app/views/ads/show_form.rjs app/views/forums app/views/forums/show.html.erb app/views/layouts app/views/layouts/_footer_1.html.erb app/views/layouts/_footer_2.html.erb app/views/layouts/_header_1.html.erb app/views/layouts/_header_2.html.erb app/views/layouts/application.html.erb app/views/mail app/views/mail/ad_activated.html.erb app/views/mail/ad_activation.html.erb app/views/mail/ad_forward.html.erb app/views/mail/forum_activated.html.erb app/views/mail/forum_activation.html.erb app/views/main app/views/main/index.html.erb app/views/posts app/views/posts/_edit.html.erb app/views/posts/edit.html.erb app/views/posts/index.html.erb app/views/radio app/views/radio/index.html.erb app/views/sessions app/views/sessions/new.rhtml app/views/sites app/views/sites/_form.html.erb app/views/sites/new.html.erb app/views/topics app/views/topics/_form.html.erb app/views/topics/edit.html.erb app/views/topics/new.html.erb app/views/topics/show.html.erb app/views/users app/views/users/_contact_info.html.erb app/views/users/_settings.html.erb app/views/users/edit.html.erb app/views/users/index.html.erb app/views/users/new.rhtml app/views/users/show.html.erb config config/boot.rb config/database.yml config/environment.rb config/environments config/environments/development.rb config/environments/production.rb config/initializers config/initializers/active_record.rb config/initializers/concerns.rb config/initializers/inflections.rb config/initializers/mime_types.rb config/routes.rb db db/migrate db/migrate/001_create_users.rb db/migrate/002_create_parent_categories.rb db/migrate/003_create_categories.rb db/migrate/004_create_ads.rb db/migrate/005_add_header_column_to_category_table.rb db/migrate/006_add_fields_to_ads_model.rb db/migrate/007_create_authors.rb db/migrate/008_create_permalinks.rb db/migrate/009_add_author_ip_and_author_ban_flag.rb db/schema.rb lib lib/authenticated_system.rb lib/authenticated_test_helper.rb lib/html_formatting.rb lib/tasks lib/tasks/load_fixtures.rake log log/development.log project.txt public public/404.html public/422.html public/500.html public/favicon.ico public/images public/images/logo.gif public/images/spinner.gif public/javascripts public/javascripts/application.js public/javascripts/controls.js public/javascripts/dragdrop.js public/javascripts/effects.js public/javascripts/lowpro.js public/javascripts/prototype.js public/javascripts/time.js public/robots.txt public/stylesheets public/stylesheets/display.css

Any other suggestions to simplifying my app would be greatly appreciated.

Kyrre

2

I'm looking for ways to make my project file hierarchy look a bit neater, by joining what can be joined and removing what can be removed. I know now how to put controllers into subfolders (see my admin), but what about models?

I think you can add a sub directory to the load path, but I haven't done it, so this is untested. Put this in environment.rb.

config.load_paths += %W( #{RAILS_ROOT}/app/models/newdirectory )

Hope that helps. Cheers, Jordan

3

I have this line in my environments.rb file (within the initializer block):

  Dir.glob("#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/models/*[^(.rb|.ignore)]").each{|dir| config.load_paths << dir }

So now I can organize models into subdirectories. And if there is a subdir I don't want loaded, I add ".ignore" to the end of it. Works like a charm for me.

-Danimal

4

Danimal, Would you mind using a few simple words to describe what is going on with this (Dir.glob) you show below? What is the significance of Dir.glob and how is it used? Could you throw in some comments to show how this works? How is Dir.glob then used in your application? Thank you, Kathleen

5

Maybe will help. Lists all the filenames under the specified directory.

6

That is truly awesome Danimal, much obliged!

Kyrre

7

Kathleen,

There could possibly be a cleaner way of doing this... i.e. grabbing only the directories. The reason I used Dir.glob is two-fold:

1) this was the example I found 2) I can create a directory called "maybetoss.ignore" and put model files that I may be deleting but not sure.

It's mostly just the way I work. As an application gets built out, I'll sometimes have models that I refactor or toss but I want to keep the code around just in case.

So another way would be to use Dir.glob to get an array of everything in app/models/ and then before adding it to the path, use File.directory?(dir) to check if it's a directory. The glob I have just ignores ".rb" files.

So it's really just a matter of how you want to arrange things in the app/models/ directory. In my case, I only have .rb files, directories and possibly a "something.ignore" directory, so that's why I use the glob I did.

Perhaps a cleaner one would be:

  Dir.glob("#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/models/*").each{|dir| config.load_paths << dir if File.directory?(dir) }

This will then just add all subdirs to the load path.

-Danimal

8

Here's my little contribution this problem, this add recursively all subfolders :

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|   ##...   def add_all_models_subfolders_recursively(config, path)     Dir.glob(path).each do |dir|       if File.directory?(dir)         p dir         config.load_paths << dir         add_all_models_subfolders_recursively(config, "#{dir}/*")       end     end   end   add_all_models_subfolders_recursively(config, "#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/ models/*")   ##... end

9

Hi,

I like Danimal's approach.

Mine is recusive:

Dir.glob("#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/models/**/*").each {|d| config.load_paths << d if File.directory?(d) }

Kind regards   Peter

10

Kabnot,

That looks good to me... except that if I'm needing more than one level of subfolders for my models, then either I'm over-organizing or it is one big-ass project! The biggest Rails project I've done to date only needed about 5-6 subfolders in the models directory. But, each to their own. :slight_smile:

-Danimal

11

Hey Danimals and Pater ! :slight_smile:

Finally I've choose Peter's solution, witch is concise and beautifull. Mine is just strong-typing like and not in the ruby way :slight_smile:

Thanks.

12

Danimal wrote:

Kabnot,

That looks good to me... except that if I'm needing more than one level of subfolders for my models, then either I'm over-organizing or it is one big-ass project! The biggest Rails project I've done to date only needed about 5-6 subfolders in the models directory. But, each to their own. :slight_smile:

-Danimal

Feels like, if you needed that many subfolders, you should probably have been namespacing your models.

namely;

Users::Facebook, Users::Web should live in /models/users

but, if we add all subfolders, we lose the possibility of this.