Rails 3 library not loading until require

Question

I\'m trying to load the Tokbox SDK in rails 3. I\'ve placed the library in my /lib directory, so currently my directory structure looks like so:

/lib
 &nb

Answer 1

Auto-loading works fine as long as the class in your file is a class that is only defined in that file. It doesn't work if you're wanting to re-open an existing class (originally defined in standard Ruby, Rails, or another library) and customize it in some way.

Example of problem:

Here's an example of a file in lib/ that would never get autoloaded:

lib/active_record/base_extensions.rb:

ActiveRecord::Base   # make sure ActiveRecord::Base is loaded
module ActiveRecord::Base::Extensions
  # some methods here
end

class ActiveRecord::Base
  include ActiveRecord::Base::Extensions
end

This file reopens ActiveRecord::Base and adds some methods to that class.

What would trigger this file to get autoloaded?? Nothing! Auto-loading is based on constants, and the constant ActiveRecord::Base has already been loaded (from the activerecord gem).

So referencing the constant ActiveRecord::Base in your app would not cause this particular file to be auto-loaded.

Workaround:

This is what I do to ensure that all my Ruby files under lib/ get required:

Add a new initializer named config/initializers/require_files_in_lib.rb with this contents:

Dir[Rails.root + 'lib/**/*.rb'].each do |file|
  require file
end

Answer 2

The autoloader will snake case the constant, so "OpenTok" would make the autoloader look for "open_tok.rb", not "opentok.rb". Try renaming lib/opentok.rb and it should work fine.