Many plugins include lots of class definitions inside plugin.rb, or use require_relative to load ruby files. That works, but it comes with some disadvantages:
-
No auto-reloading of changes in development. Any changes require a full server restart
-
Getting the
requirecalls in the right order can be painful -
If they are
require’d outside theafter_initializeblock, then other autoloaded classes/modules may not be available
There is a solution! Plugins can lean on the standard Rails autoloading system. For new plugins, everything you need is defined in the plugin-skeleton. This topic describes how to adapt an existing plugin and extend the configuration.
1. Define a module and a Rails::Engine for your plugin
In plugin.rb, define a module for your plugin with a unique PLUGIN_NAME, and add a require_relative line to load the engine file we’re about to create.
# name: my-plugin-name
# ...
module ::MyPluginModule
PLUGIN_NAME = "my-plugin-name"
end
require_relative "lib/my_plugin_module/engine"
Now create {plugin}/lib/my_plugin_module/engine.rb:
module ::MyPluginModule
class Engine < ::Rails::Engine
engine_name PLUGIN_NAME
isolate_namespace MyPluginModule
end
end
Important things to note:
-
In plugin.rb, you must include
::before your module name to define it in the root namespace (otherwise, it would be defined underPlugin::Instance) -
require_relative "lib/.../engine"must be in the root of theplugin.rbfile, not inside anafter_initializeblock -
Putting the engine in its own file under
lib/is important. Defining it directly in theplugin.rbfile will not work. (Rails uses the presence of alib/directory to determine the root of the engine) -
The file path should include the module name, according to the Zeitwerk rules
-
The
engine_nameis used as the prefix for rake tasks and any routes defined by the engine (
rails docs) -
isolate_namespacehelps to prevent things leaking between core and the plugin ( Rails docs)
2. Define ruby files in the correct directory structure
The engine will now autoload all files in {plugin}/app/{type}/*. For example, we can define a controller
{plugin}/app/controllers/my_plugin_module/examples_controller.rb
module ::MyPluginModule
class ExamplesController < ::ApplicationController
requires_plugin PLUGIN_NAME
def index
render json: { hello: "world" }
end
end
end
This will now be autoloaded whenever anything in Rails tries to access ::MyPluginModule::MyController. To test things, try accessing that class from the rails console.
For autoloading to work correctly, file paths must match the full module/class heirarchy according to the rules defined by Zeitwerk.
3. Defining routes on the plugin’s engine
Create a {plugin}/config/routes.rb file
MyPluginModule::Engine.routes.draw do
get "/examples" => "examples#index"
# define routes here
end
Discourse::Application.routes.draw do
mount ::MyPluginModule::Engine, at: "my-plugin"
end
This file will be automatically loaded by the engine, and changes will take effect without a server restart. In this case, the controller action would be available at /my-plugin/examples.json.
4. Adding more autoloaded paths
Sometimes you may like to introduce additional directories of autoloadable Ruby files. The most common example is the lib/ directory in a plugin.
Modify your engine definition to append lib/ to the engine’s autoload paths:
class Engine < ::Rails::Engine
engine_name PLUGIN_NAME
isolate_namespace MyPluginModule
config.autoload_paths << File.join(config.root, "lib")
end
Now you can define a lib module like
{plugin}/lib/my_plugin_module/some_lib_module.rb
module ::MyPluginModule::SomeLibModule
end
And now any references to ::MyPluginModule::SomeLibModule will automatically load the module from this file.
5. Profit!
All these files will now be automatically loaded without any deliberate require calls. Changes will be automatically picked up by rails and reloaded in-place with no server restart.