Rails plugins that use other plugins - why is does this seem impossible?

OK, probably the most frustrated I’ve ever been with Rails. If I don’t
figure this out, I’m going to, um… try again tomorrow.

I’m simply trying to create a plugin. I did the ./script/generate
plugin MY_NEW_PLUGIN and wha-hoo great! Well, not really…

This plugin uses other plugins. For example, acts_as_list,
acts_as_money etc… How the heck to I get these plugins loaded and
ready to be used? I’ve put them here:

main-app/vendor/plugins/MY_NEW_PLUGIN/vendor/plugins/

I’ve added all of their paths and lib paths to the config.load_paths
variable, I’ve tried loading (require and load) their init.rb files.
And no matter what, it’s pretty obvious that the paths aren’t setup
correctly. I’ve even tried

$: << ‘path/to/acts_as_list’
$: << ‘path/to/acts_as_list/lib’

I’d like to be able to specify additional load_paths in init.rb and
then use config.plugins - seems logical.?

Ahhhhhhoar!!!

Hi Ryan,

I tried irc, which is totally foreign to me. What is nickserv? Am I
supposed to signup for membership?

On Jan 14, 10:59 pm, “Ryan B.” [email protected] wrote:

perhaps just a require ‘acts_as_list’ with a rescue with an error message
will do it, probably.

Well, my plugin, will come with acts_as_list. So I just want to be
able to load it correctly. When my plugins init.rb file is loaded, I’m
pretty sure that $LOAD_PATH is already set. So using config.load_paths
doesn’t seem to do anything. And the same with config.plugin_paths.

perhaps just a require ‘acts_as_list’ with a rescue with an error
message
will do it, probably. There’s most likely a better way to go about it,
and
why not ask the #rubyonrails irc channel in irc.freenode.net? Their
responses can be more instantaneous than here most times.

Oh yeah I should’ve mentioned. You have to have a registered name before
you
go into the channel so that random people can’t spam it. Just type /msg
nickserv help register and follow the instructions.

On Jan 15, 2008 2:45 PM, goodieboy [email protected] wrote:

Well, my plugin, will come with acts_as_list. So I just want to be
able to load it correctly. When my plugins init.rb file is loaded, I’m
pretty sure that $LOAD_PATH is already set. So using config.load_paths
doesn’t seem to do anything. And the same with config.plugin_paths.

There’s most likely a better way to go about it, and
why not ask the #rubyonrails irc channel in irc.freenode.net? Their
responses can be more instantaneous than here most times.


Ryan B.

Feel free to add me to MSN and/or GTalk as this email.

Cool, thank you :slight_smile:

Is this rails 1.2 or rails 2.0? Quite a bit changed about plugin
loading in between.

Fred

Rails 2.0.2

I found a way to make it all work - not the correct, Rails way though.
It’s not what I would have expected. I thought I could do everything I
needed inside of the init.rb file. But from the way it seems, at that
point it’s too late to add to the $LOAD_PATH so adding plugins to
config.plugins inside of init.rb doesn’t work. Or am I wrong? I tried
many different things.

I’ll come clean now; this plugin is really another Rails app. it has
controllers, models, views, routes etc… I wanted to be able to reuse
this inside of client apps. And maintain only one code base for the
“plugin” (updatable via svn etc.) I wanted it to work like Django apps
do. And I achieved a lot of that by initializing my plugin inside of
the Rails::Initialize.run block:

Rails::Initialize.run do |config|
MySuperPluginThatsReallyAnApp::init(config)
end

Basically, I add a bunch of paths (load_paths and load_once_paths),
include my plugins etc… Now I can use that one line in my main apps’
environment.rb file, and without doing anything have a full blown app
running without doing any extra coding. And thanks to the load paths,
I can override any view, model etc… just by creating the file in the
app that’s using the “plugin”. Very handy. I have to manually copy
routes, and public folder items, but that’s OK. I want to be able to
override those aspects anyway.

The big downside is that I can’t do cool, builtin things with Rake,
and testing. So I’m going to keep trying to get this to work the
correct, Rails 2.0 plugin way.

Feedback anyone?

On Jan 15, 3:48 am, Frederick C. [email protected]