# Reloading Routes with a Rake Task

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reloading-routes-with-a-rake-task/140841>\
**Category:** Radiant CMS\
**Created:** [June 19, 2008, 4:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reloading-routes-with-a-rake-task/140841 "2008-06-19T04:40:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 4:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reloading-routes-with-a-rake-task/140841/1 "2008-06-19T04:40:41Z")

</div>

This may be more Rails than Radiant but can anyone give me a hand with  
this one…

How do I execute ActionController::Routing::Routes.reload! for a running  
instance of Radiant from a Rake task? It works fine if I trigger it  
from within the app but I need it to run from Rake and it seems that  
Rake runs in a separate process.

Background for those who want it:

In the SnS extension, I define custom routes for CSS and JS files to  
route to my own TextAssetSiteController. I did this to prevent coupling  
too tightly with SiteController.

Well, now I’m upgrading the functionality to allow admins to change the  
configuration on the fly using Rake tasks. This includes settings that  
require the route to be updated and I don’t know how to get Rake to run  
ActionController::Routing::Routes.reload! for a running instance of  
Radiant.

-Chris

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 6:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reloading-routes-with-a-rake-task/140841/2 "2008-06-19T18:21:59Z")

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Nevermind. I wound up going the route of alias\_method\_chain-ing  
SiteController’s #show\_page method. It makes things more tightly  
coupled to Radiant but it’s also closer to how it’d be if built-in.

If anybody else out there is already using alias\_method\_chain on this  
method in your extension, let me know. I’d sure love to avoid a 20 car  
pileup there if a user has multiple extensions installed.

-Chris

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 10:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reloading-routes-with-a-rake-task/140841/3 "2008-06-19T22:51:14Z")

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Chris P. wrote:

> Nevermind. I wound up going the route of alias\_method\_chain-ing  
> SiteController’s #show\_page method. It makes things more tightly  
> coupled to Radiant but it’s also closer to how it’d be if built-in.
> 
> If anybody else out there is already using alias\_method\_chain on this  
> method in your extension, let me know. I’d sure love to avoid a 20 car  
> pileup there if a user has multiple extensions installed.
> 
> -Chris

Could you simply add a before filter in that controller instead? before  
filters can stack up without overriding other filters in other  
extensions. And seems cleaner than an alias\_method\_chain

before\_filter :reload\_routes, :only =\> :show

private  
def reload\_routes  
ActionController::Routing::Routes.reload!  
end

And yes, since rake loads up its own rails process, it wont work for  
this. The only way I can see send a message like this into a rails form  
outside is via http. So your rake task would send a request to  
“[http://mysite.com/reload\_routes](http://mysite.com/reload_routes)” which would do what you want.

But that gets hairy too. Lets say you have multiple mongrels, 1 out of  
4 got that request, and reloads its routes. All other mongrel don’t  
have their routes reloaded.

In general, I don’t think you can use rake very well to modify the state  
of an already running rails process. You definitely want a hook in your  
extension to load the routes as needed. And remember that just because  
you updated the routes in the rails process that handled the admin  
requested route change doesn’t mean its been updated in the other  
processes. This is a bug that would work fine in development mode with  
a single process, and suddenly cause weird issues in a more distrubed  
production deployment.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2008, 5:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reloading-routes-with-a-rake-task/140841/4 "2008-06-20T05:15:05Z")

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I’ve made about 5 websites with radiant so far and I guess most of  
them I just started with a simple blog or empty. Today I started with  
the more filled in version and discovered how this sidebar page part  
is being used. It’s brilliant! Really. I’ve been using snippets to  
attempt the same thing but their not nearly as flexible. I’m forever  
learning new things about Radiant with each new website I make with  
it. Thanks for all your thoughtful work guys. I love using this  
system.

Steven

> **[STEVEN SOUTHARD |Email Developer](https://www.stevensouthard.com/)**
>
> Steven Southard | Email Developer

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2008, 5:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reloading-routes-with-a-rake-task/140841/5 "2008-06-20T05:59:06Z")

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Chris P. wrote:

> My question was originally tied to approach #1. I could use a Rake task  
> to change the “javascript\_directory” but couldn’t get the  
> already-running server to reload its routes.
> 
> Now I’m working on having an augmented SiteController#show\_page action  
> process the whole thing (#2). If I use a before\_filter to call my  
> #show\_text\_asset action and it finds and renders the script/stylesheet,  
> how to I then prevent things from proceeding on to #show\_page?
> 
> Will rails let you set up a before\_filter against only one action,  
> anyway?
> 
> -Chris

I believe, in any rails before\_filter if you call render or redirect\_to,  
it halts the filter chain and prevents further execution. This is  
commonly used for access control. So as long as you render something,  
it should works just as you need it too. Unless radiant does something  
funky with rendering that I dont know about.

before\_filter :authorize  
def authorize  
redirect\_to login\_url unless admin\_logged\_in?  
end

And yes, you can fine tune your before filters by passing action names  
to the :only or :except keys of the options hash.

before\_filter :foo, :only =\> [:index, :show]  
before\_filter :foo, :except =\> [:create]

They are pretty flexible creatures.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2008, 6:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reloading-routes-with-a-rake-task/140841/6 "2008-06-20T06:26:30Z")

</div>

Hmm. Will give that a whirl then. I’ll let you know. Thanks.

-Chris

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2008, 3:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reloading-routes-with-a-rake-task/140841/7 "2008-06-20T15:16:35Z")

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If a plain redirect or render doesn’t work, return false as well.  
That’ll halt the chain for sure.

Sean

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2008, 4:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reloading-routes-with-a-rake-task/140841/8 "2008-06-20T04:22:55Z")

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Actually, I was just thinking about using a before filter too. I hate  
being so obtrusive with alias\_method\_chain, but I’m not sure a  
before\_filter will work.

The job I’m trying to do here is find and render css and js files and,  
if the file’s not found, let SiteController try to render it as a page  
(or render the 404 for me). There are two approaches (that I can think  
of anyway):

1. Set up a route to catch “#{javascript\_directory}/\*filename”  
(similar for stylesheets) and send it to my controller to look for  
and render the file. If my controller can’t find the file, pass  
things along to SiteController’s #show\_page method. (This is how  
SnS did it originally)

2. Don’t use any cust6m routing but instead piggyback on  
SiteController’s #show\_page method. Instead of site controller  
looking for pages, I’d first steal the processing and try to match  
the params[:url] against the javascript\_directory. If it matches  
a js or css file -\> render it. If the file can’t be found, return  
processing back to your regularly scheduled action (#show\_page)  
and let it do its thing.

My question was originally tied to approach #1. I could use a Rake task  
to change the “javascript\_directory” but couldn’t get the  
already-running server to reload its routes.

Now I’m working on having an augmented SiteController#show\_page action  
process the whole thing (#2). If I use a before\_filter to call my  
#show\_text\_asset action and it finds and renders the script/stylesheet,  
how to I then prevent things from proceeding on to #show\_page?

Will rails let you set up a before\_filter against only one action,  
anyway?

-Chris