Where is the best place to add methods to the Integer class in Rails?

Question

Where is the best place to add a method to the integer class in Rails? I\'d like to add a to_meters and to_miles methods.

Answer 1

Realize the question is old, but I think the clearest way would be to make a Distance class with two attributes @length and @unit.

You'd just need a conversion hash, probably as a class variable of Distance:

class Distance

  @@conversion_rates = {
    meters: {
      feet: 3.28084,
      meters: 1.0
    }
  }

  def to(new_unit)
    new_length = @length * @@conversion_rates[@unit][new_unit]
    Distance.new( new_length, new_unit ) 
  end

end

And it would look kinda like:

Distance.new(3, :meters).to(:feet)

which i honestly think looks better than

3.meters.to_feet