Way to load folder as module constant in rails app directory

Question

So have a rails 5 project and would like to load a directory like this

/app
  /services
    /user
      foo.rb

as the constant ::Services::User::Foo

Does anyone have experience in getting rails autoload paths to load the constants in this manner?

---

foo.rb

module Services
  module User
    class Foo

    end
  end
end

SOLUTION

Add this to your application.rb file

config.autoload_paths << Rails.root.join('app')

See discussions here on autoloading

https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/14382#issuecomment-37763348 https://github.com/trailblazer/trailblazer/issues/89#issuecomment-149367035

Cralg

What's inside foo.rb? A class, a module, loose methods? – Nubilous

How is the class named? Foo, not inside a module? – Nubilous

It would be a class that is underneath the modules (Services::User), just updated question with example – Cralg

Answer 1

Auto loading

You need to define Services::User::Foo inside app/services/services/user/foo.rb

If you don't want this weird subfolder duplication, you could also move services to app/models/services or lib/services.

You could also leave foo.rb in app/services/user/foo.rb, but it should define User::Foo.

Eager loading

If you don't need any magic with namespaces and class names, it is pretty straightforward :

Dir[Rails.root.join('app/services/**/*.rb')].each{|rb| require rb}

This will eagerly load any Ruby script inside app/services and any subfolder.

Nubilous

Thanks for taking the time to answer, i am wanting this to go with the autoload paths so that it is reloaded on file changes, when i do this config.autoload_paths += Dir[File.join(Rails.root,'app/services')] the constants don't show up – Cralg

For the Autoloading example above, that should work out of the box without having to add to the autoload_paths b/c all folders in the app directory are there by default. My thought was that there had to be a way to do that without the double nesting – Cralg

Subfolders in app are not treated equally. app/models/user.rb does not define Models::User but just User for example. – Nubilous

Cool, i see/understand what you are saying. I was thinking that there might be some way to tell ActiveSupport to load a folder as a module. – Cralg

github.com/rails/rails/issues/14382#issuecomment-37763348 this may do it, will check here in a bit and update – Cralg

No need to add config.autoload_paths << Rails.root.join('app/services') actually. – Nubilous

Adding config.autoload_paths << Rails.root.join('app') does the trick that will load the services folder as a module and loads all the other stuff normally (models/controllers/etc) – Cralg