Rails Root directory path?

Question

How do I get my Rails app\'s root directory path?

Answer 1

In Rails 3 and newer:

Rails.root

which returns a Pathname object. If you want a string you have to add .to_s. If you want another path in your Rails app, you can use join like this:

Rails.root.join('app', 'assets', 'images', 'logo.png')

In Rails 2 you can use the RAILS_ROOT constant, which is a string.

Answer 2

In some cases you may want the Rails root without having to load Rails.

For example, you get a quicker feedback cycle when TDD'ing models that do not depend on Rails by requiring spec_helper instead of rails_helper.

# spec/spec_helper.rb

require 'pathname'

rails_root = Pathname.new('..').expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__))

[
  rails_root.join('app', 'models'),
  # Add your decorators, services, etc.
].each do |path|
  $LOAD_PATH.unshift path.to_s
end

Which allows you to easily load Plain Old Ruby Objects from their spec files.

# spec/models/poro_spec.rb

require 'spec_helper'

require 'poro'

RSpec.describe ...

Answer 3

You can use:

Rails.root

But to to join the assets you can use:

Rails.root.join(*%w( app assets))

Hopefully this helps you.