As of Rails 3.1 the syntax is simplified a little by ActiveSupport::Concern:
Now you can do
require 'active_support/concern'
module M
extend ActiveSupport::Concern
included do
scope :disabled, where(:disabled => true)
end
module ClassMethods
...
end
end
ActiveSupport::Concern also sweeps in the dependencies of the included module, here is the documentation
[update, addressing aceofbassgreg's comment]
The Rails 3.1 and later ActiveSupport::Concern allows an include module's instance methods to be included directly, so that it's not necessary to create an InstanceMethods module inside the included module. Also it's no longer necessary in Rails 3.1 and later to include M::InstanceMethods and extend M::ClassMethods. So we can have simpler code like this:
require 'active_support/concern'
module M
extend ActiveSupport::Concern
# foo will be an instance method when M is "include"'d in another class
def foo
"bar"
end
module ClassMethods
# the baz method will be included as a class method on any class that "include"s M
def baz
"qux"
end
end
end
class Test
# this is all that is required! It's a beautiful thing!
include M
end
Test.new.foo # ->"bar"
Test.baz # -> "qux"