I'm working on a rails app that is starting to have what seems (to me) to be a lot of models. There are 15 right now, but I'm thinking about adding 3-4 more to serve as "tag" like models (I need more functionality than Acts As Taggable offers).
So, the reason this bugs me a bit, is that 7 of the 15 models belong to a common parent. Several are belong_to, and a few are has_and_belongs_to_many. All the new models I'm contemplating would belong_to the same parent as well.
So, what I'm wondering is, what is the best "Railsy" way of organizing this kind of situation?
Instead of app/models being super crowded with 6 "first-class" models and 10+ children of one of these, should/can I start using sub folders in my app folder? ie: app/models/parent/child.rb?
I know this is kind of an open-ended question, but I would really appreciate advice as to the best way to handle a rails project with a proliferation of models.
Thanks!
You can do this, I always do :)
Just beware of something: if you create a folder which has the name of one your models, it will fail. Actually, Rails will think you want to extend it.
So in your model folder, prepend the name of your class with whatever fancy you want.
Example: if you want to put models related to users, put them in models/user_related/
You'll have to add this to your application.rb file:
config.autoload_paths += Dir["#{Rails.root.to_s}/app/models/*"].find_all { |f| File.stat(f).directory? }
This will autoload all folders included in modelsdirectory.