Rails: I can't call a function in a module in /lib - what am I doing wrong?

Question

I know I\'m doing something stupid or failing to do something intelligent - I\'m frequently guilty of both.

Here\'s an example of what\'s causing me pain:

I have

Answer 1

I messed with this for a while and learned several things. Hopefully this will help someone else out. I am running Rails 3.2.8.

My module (utilities.rb) looks like this and is in the /lib directory of my rails app:

module Utilities

  def compute_hello(input_string)
     return "Hello #{input_string}"
  end

end

My test (my_test.rb) looks like this and is in the /test/unit directory of my rails app:

require "test_helper"
require "utilities"

class MyTest < ActiveSupport::TestCase
  include Utilities

  def test_compute_hello
    x = compute_hello(input_string="Miles")
    print x
    assert x=="Hello Miles", "Incorrect Response"
  end

end

Here are a few things to note: My test extends ActiveSupport::TestCase. This is important because ActiveSupport adds /lib to the $LOAD_PATH. (seehttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/1073076/rails-lib-modules-and)

Secondly, I needed to both "require" my module file, and also "include" the module. Lastly, it is important to note that the stuff that gets included from the module essentially gets placed in the test class. So... be careful that the module that you include doesn't start with "test_". Otherwise, Rails will attempt to run your module method as a test.