Locate rails application root directory

Rails
1

Is there a simple way to obtain the full path of the Rails application
root directory from the Rails application?
(The parent dir of the apps,public, etc. directories)

Thanks in advance,
Don McClean

2

I’m relatively new to Unix. Is there a problem with using the relative
path
vs. the absolute? I’d just like to be clearer on that 'cause I sometimes
see
just RAILS_ROOT and sometimes the File.expand_path. I’m no fan of the
cargo
cult so I’ve just stuck with using RAILS_ROOT. :wink:

RSL

3

Is there a simple way to obtain the full path of the Rails application
root directory from the Rails application?
(The parent dir of the apps,public, etc. directories)

The RAILS_ROOT constant.

However this will most likely be a relative path, but you can use
File.expand_path to make it absolute.

-philip

4

There can be a problem with relative vs absolute path when it comes to
#require:

require ‘./…/lib/file’
vs
require ‘/home/user/site/lib/file’

Doing both will actually require the file twice, as Ruby caches
according to
the string given. While this is a rare case, it can lead to a lot of
debugging time if you don’t realize this, so be careful.

Jason

5

Thanks!

6

I’m relatively new to Unix. Is there a problem with using the relative path
vs. the absolute? I’d just like to be clearer on that 'cause I sometimes see
just RAILS_ROOT and sometimes the File.expand_path. I’m no fan of the cargo
cult so I’ve just stuck with using RAILS_ROOT. :wink:

I don’t think so… maybe in some cases where you have some shared code
and want to test the path to set a variable… of some sort… in that
case you’d want the full path to test with.

7

Thanks!