# Creating your own generators

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-your-own-generators/58789>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 25, 2006, 11:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-your-own-generators/58789 "2006-04-25T23:00:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![John\_WSLong](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/34f0e0/32.png) [@John\_WSLong](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/John_WSLong)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2006, 11:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-your-own-generators/58789/1 "2006-04-25T23:00:05Z")

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So I’m interested in creating an application specific generator. The  
script/generate command tells me that all I have to do is put a  
generator in my rails\_root/generators:

> 1. Unzip to directory /Users/{username}/.rails/generators/login  
> to use the generator with all your Rails apps  
> or to {app\_root}/generators/login  
> to use with this app only.

So I created a generators directory and plop in my generator. Upon  
executing `script/generate {generator_name}` I get:

> Couldn’t find ‘{generator\_name}’ generator

What do I need to do differently? Is there any documentation on creating  
generators? I found:

[http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/Generators](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/Generators)

But it didn’t talk about creating your own generator. A `script/generate generator` command would be most helpful for bootstrapping the creation  
process of new generators.

–  
John L.  
[http://wiseheartdesign.com](http://wiseheartdesign.com)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![John\_WSLong](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/34f0e0/32.png) [@John\_WSLong](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/John_WSLong)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2006, 11:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-your-own-generators/58789/2 "2006-04-25T23:49:26Z")

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I have created my own generator in the context of a plugin, and it  
worked  
pretty well. There isn’t a functional difference between the two, so  
maybe  
you would be willing to go that route.

As I understand it, if you want to create a generator, you follow these  
steps. Imagine the generator is going to be called “widget\_generator”

1. Create the directory vendor/plugins/widget/generators/widget
2. Create the file  
vendor/plugins/widget/generators/widget/widget\_generator.rb
3. In that file, put this code:

class WidgetGenerator \< Rails::Generator::Base  
def manifest  
record do |m|  
### generator commands …  
end  
end  
end

Note all the file, directory and class names - they are very important.  
If  
everything worked right, when you type “ruby script/generate” you should  
see  
“widget\_generator” listed. Note that you can also inherit from NamedBase  
and  
you will get some command line argument support - though I haven’t  
explored  
that so I can’t speak to it.

Sadly, generators are pretty badly documented. I suggest browsing the  
Rails  
source to see what you can do with them. In your gems installation, the  
relevant files are in rails/lib/rails\_generator.

If you want to look at a working generator, the plugin I mentioned above  
can  
be downloaded from [http://rubyforge.org/projects/realapps-cms/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/realapps-cms/) . Just  
click  
“Files” and get the latest zip. Unzip it into vendor/plugins and then  
you  
can run it with ‘ruby script/generate realapps\_cms’.

Hope that helps and good luck!

Justin

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![John\_WSLong](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/34f0e0/32.png) [@John\_WSLong](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/John_WSLong)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2006, 11:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-your-own-generators/58789/3 "2006-04-25T23:58:43Z")

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I also highly recommend Chad F.'s book, “Rails Recipes.” Chad has  
a recipe in the book on creating your own generators. Plus you get  
like 70+ more really cool things all for one low price. 🙂

Michael

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![John\_WSLong](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/34f0e0/32.png) [@John\_WSLong](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/John_WSLong)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 4:36am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-your-own-generators/58789/4 "2006-04-26T04:36:19Z")

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Justin B. wrote:

> I have created my own generator in the context of a plugin, and it worked  
> pretty well. There isn’t a functional difference between the two, so maybe  
> you would be willing to go that route.

I did try this, and it worked, but it turns out the directory is  
‘lib/generators’ not ‘generators’ like the usage guidelines describe.

–  
John L.  
[http://johnwlong.com](http://johnwlong.com)