Accessing models from within the lib directory in a Rails 3 project

Question

I have a file in the lib directory that uses some constants defined in a model, like:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
   MAX_EMAIL_ADDRESS_LENGTH = 255
en         


        

Answer 1

The first part was done right:

config.autoload_paths += %W(#{config.root}/lib)

Next, it is important, module

module Foo
  ...
end

must be placed into

lib/foo.rb

file.

And then, it can be included into application code.

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Foo
  ...
end

If file foo.rb from lib directory is not intended to be included (however it is probably a wrong way), then to use Rails models and other stuff inside this code you should put this into foo.rb:

require_relative "../config/environment.rb"