Newbie Question: The model equivilent of "helpers"

Rails
1

If I have ruby code that I need to share among a number of model
classes,
what’s the “right” place to put it form a Ruby standpoint?

The code provides support for various calculations. It has no data
elements
that are persisted in a database. It seems like there should be
something
like a helpers directory for models for this kind of supporting code.

thanks for your help.
-larry

2

If you have methods that you want to make available in a number of
classes, you should put these methods in a module and have each class
‘include’ this module, i.e.

in RAILS_ROOT/lib/my_module.rb (you’ll want to ‘require’ this file in
environment.rb too, probably)

module MyModule
def calculate_meaning_of_life
6 * 7
end
end

… then in your model objects:

RAILS_ROOT/app/models/model_alpha.rb

class ModelAlpha < ActiveRecord::Base
include MyModule
…
end

RAILS_ROOT/app/models/model_beta.rb

class ModelBeta < ActiveRecord::Base
include MyModule
…
end

… and so on.

  • james