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.

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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

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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.