AutoloadPath
Sometimes when you create a gem or a Rails Engine you need to require a lot of files before the engine's declaration and well, here is where autoload_path can help you, it's a very simple gem that allows you to search through a folder and it's subfolders in search of files and automatically require them.
Installation
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'autoload_path'
And then execute:
bundle install
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install autoload_path
Example
There are 3 files that aren't loaded in a rails project:
lib/autoload_test/hello_world.rb
puts "LOADED FROM HelloWorld"
class HelloWorld
end
lib/autoload_test/core/foo.rb
puts "LOADED FROM FOO"
lib/autoload_test/core/bar.rb
puts "LOADED FROM BAR"
if we try to initialize the class HelloWorld it will give us an error:
HelloWorld.new
NameError: uninitialized constant HelloWorld
from (irb):1
from /home/developer/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p481@rails4/gems/railties-4.2.0/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:110:in `start'
from /home/developer/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p481@rails4/gems/railties-4.2.0/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:9:in `start'
To require the file of the entire folder lib/autoload_test we are going to use the require_path method
path = Rails.root.join("lib", "autoload_test")
=> #<Pathname:/home/shared-data/projects/ruby/gems/autoload_demo/lib/autoload_test>
AutoloadPath.require_path path
=> LOADED FROM FOO
LOADED FROM BAR
LOADED FROM HelloWorld
hello_world = HelloWorld.new
=> #<HelloWorld:0x007fb61055bd88>
As you ca see we now have have required the the 3 files and now we can use it in our project
Available Methods
AutoloadPath.require_path
This method require the files that are in the folder, it takes one parameter that is the path and have 2 optional arguments that are only and except that takes an array of file paths that you want to include or exclude.
Example
# Include only some files
path = Rails.root.join("lib", "autoload_test")
foo_file = File.join(path,"core", "foo.rb")
AutoloadPath.require_path path, only: [foo_file]
=> LOADED FROM FOO
# Exclude files
path = Rails.root.join("lib", "autoload_test")
bar_file = File.join(path,"core", "bar.rb")
AutoloadPath.require_path path, except: [bar_file]
=> LOADED FROM FOO
LOADED FROM HelloWorld
AutoloadPath.load_path
It does the same as AutoloadPath.require_path but uses load instead of require, remember that the main difference between both it's that require only include the file once even if u call it multiple times, while load include the file each time you use it, so be careful when using load.
AutoloadPath.get_files
It returns an Array of files that are inside that folder
Example
path = Rails.root.join("lib", "autoload_test")
AutoloadPath.get_files path
=> ["/home/shared-data/projects/ruby/gems/autoload_demo/lib/autoload_test/core/foo.rb", "/home/shared-data/projects/ruby/gems/autoload_demo/lib/autoload_test/core/bar.rb", "/home/shared-data/projects/ruby/gems/autoload_demo/lib/autoload_test/hello_world.rb"]
Copyright
Copyright (c) 2015 Emilio Forrer. See LICENSE.txt for further details.