Rails application directory

Rails
1

Hi all,

I was wondering if there was a kosher way of getting the complete path
to the root location of a Rails app? I know there’s ROOT_PATH, but I
think that changes when I do Dir.chdir() to some other location. Or at
least it’s what I am seeing.

For example:

Dir.pwd
=> “/Users/diego/Code/Rails/mview”

puts RAILS_ROOT
script/…/config/…/config/…
=> nil

Dir.chdir(’/’)
=> 0

puts RAILS_ROOT
script/…/config/…/config/…
=> nil

Dir.pwd
=> “/”

So basically anytime I do a chdir, away from the Rails root dir, I can
no longer use RAILS_ROOT to get a starting point to do file and
directory work.

Do I just need to define a global const with my app’s complete path
and use that?

Cheers,
Diego

2

I suppose it depends on what context you need the root for. One way
that always seems to work is to ask for File.dir(FILE)

Scott

3

Sorry. File.dirname(FILE)

4

Thanks, Scott. I want the root as a starting point from which I can
(for example) store uploaded files somewhere in my application’s
directory structure. I may want to get to:

/Users/diego/MyApp/public/data/images

So I wanted to have a way to always get /Users/diego/MyApp/ and I can
go off from there.

Thanks for the tip on using FILE. What I did, before your reply,
was to add APP_ROOT = File.expand_path(RAILS_ROOT) in the
application’s initialization.

Diego