Locate rails application root directory

rubyonrails-talk
1

Is there a simple way to obtain the full path of the Rails application root directory from the Rails application? (The parent dir of the apps,public, etc. directories)

Thanks in advance, Don McClean

2

Is there a simple way to obtain the full path of the Rails application root directory from the Rails application? (The parent dir of the apps,public, etc. directories)

The RAILS_ROOT constant.

However this will most likely be a relative path, but you can use File.expand_path to make it absolute.

-philip

3

Thanks!

4

I’m relatively new to Unix. Is there a problem with using the relative path vs. the absolute? I’d just like to be clearer on that 'cause I sometimes see just RAILS_ROOT and sometimes the File.expand_path. I’m no fan of the cargo cult so I’ve just stuck with using RAILS_ROOT. :wink:

RSL

5

I'm relatively new to Unix. Is there a problem with using the relative path vs. the absolute? I'd just like to be clearer on that 'cause I sometimes see just RAILS_ROOT and sometimes the File.expand_path. I'm no fan of the cargo cult so I've just stuck with using RAILS_ROOT. :wink:

I don't think so... maybe in some cases where you have some shared code and want to test the path to set a variable... of some sort... in that case you'd want the full path to test with.

6

Thanks!

7

There can be a problem with relative vs absolute path when it comes to #require:

require ‘./…/lib/file’ vs require ‘/home/user/site/lib/file’

Doing both will actually require the file twice, as Ruby caches according to the string given. While this is a rare case, it can lead to a lot of debugging time if you don’t realize this, so be careful.

Jason