OK, probably the most frustrated I've ever been with Rails. If I don't
figure this out, I'm going to, um... try again tomorrow.
I'm simply trying to create a plugin. I did the ./script/generate
plugin MY_NEW_PLUGIN and wha-hoo great! Well, not really...
This plugin uses other plugins. For example, acts_as_list,
acts_as_money etc.. How the heck to I get these plugins loaded and
ready to be used? I've put them here:
I've added all of their paths and lib paths to the config.load_paths
variable, I've tried loading (require and load) their init.rb files.
And no matter what, it's pretty obvious that the paths aren't setup
correctly. I've even tried
perhaps just a require ‘acts_as_list’ with a rescue with an error message will do it, probably. There’s most likely a better way to go about it, and why not ask the #rubyonrails irc channel in
irc.freenode.net? Their responses can be more instantaneous than here most times.
I tried irc, which is totally foreign to me. What is nickserv? Am I
supposed to signup for membership?
perhaps just a require 'acts_as_list' with a rescue with an error message
will do it, probably.
Well, my plugin, will come with acts_as_list. So I just want to be
able to load it correctly. When my plugins init.rb file is loaded, I'm
pretty sure that $LOAD_PATH is already set. So using config.load_paths
doesn't seem to do anything. And the same with config.plugin_paths.
Oh yeah I should’ve mentioned. You have to have a registered name before you go into the channel so that random people can’t spam it. Just type /msg nickserv help register and follow the instructions.
I found a way to make it all work - not the correct, Rails way though.
It's not what I would have expected. I thought I could do everything I
needed inside of the init.rb file. But from the way it seems, at that
point it's too late to add to the $LOAD_PATH so adding plugins to
config.plugins inside of init.rb doesn't work. Or am I wrong? I tried
many different things.
I'll come clean now; this plugin is really another Rails app. it has
controllers, models, views, routes etc.. I wanted to be able to reuse
this inside of client apps. And maintain only one code base for the
"plugin" (updatable via svn etc.) I wanted it to work like Django apps
do. And I achieved a lot of that by initializing my plugin inside of
the Rails::Initialize.run block:
Rails::Initialize.run do |config|
MySuperPluginThatsReallyAnApp::init(config)
end
Basically, I add a bunch of paths (load_paths and load_once_paths),
include my plugins etc.. Now I can use that one line in my main apps'
environment.rb file, and without doing anything have a full blown app
running without doing any extra coding. And thanks to the load paths,
I can override any view, model etc.. just by creating the file in the
app that's using the "plugin". Very handy. I have to manually copy
routes, and public folder items, but that's OK. I want to be able to
override those aspects anyway.
The big downside is that I can't do cool, builtin things with Rake,
and testing. So I'm going to keep trying to get this to work the
correct, Rails 2.0 plugin way.
