How can I extend ApplicationController in a gem?

Question

I thought I'd come up with a slick way to extend ApplicationController in a Rails 3.x gem.

In my gem's lib/my_namespace/my_controller.rb, I had:

class MyNamespace::MyController < ApplicationController

  before_filter :some_method
  after_filter :another_method

  def initialize
    # getting classname of the subclass to use for lookup of the associated model, etc.
    # and storing the model_class in an instance variable
    # ...
  end

  # define :some_method, :another_method, etc.
  # ...

private
  attr_accessor :subclass_defined_during_initialize # etc.

  # etc.
end

but when the Gem is loaded, app/controllers/application_controller.rb is not yet loaded, so it fails:

/path/to/rvm/gemset/gems/activesupport-3.2.6/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:251:
in `require': cannot load such file -- my_gem_name/application_controller (LoadError)

As a workaround, I had defined ApplicationController in my gem's lib/gem_namespace/application_controller.rb as:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
end

I assumed that even though I had defined it there, it would be redefined in my Rails 3 application's app/controllers/application_controller.rb, such that both controllers in the application that extended ApplicationController and controllers that extended MyNamespace::MyController would directly or indirectly extend the ApplicationController defined in app/controllers/application_controller.rb.

However, we noticed that after loading the gem, controllers that extend ApplicationController were unable to access methods defined in app/controllers/application_controller.rb. Also, the ApplicationHelper (app/helpers/application_helper.rb) module was no longer being loaded by other helper modules.

How can I extend ApplicationController within the controller in my gem for the purpose of defining a before_filter and after_filter to and use initialize to access the class's name to determine the associated model's class that it could then store and use within its methods?

Update 2012/10/22:

Here's what I came up with:

In lib/your_gem_name/railtie.rb:

module YourGemsModuleName
  class Railtie < Rails::Railtie
    initializer "your_gem_name.action_controller" do
    ActiveSupport.on_load(:action_controller) do
      puts "Extending #{self} with YourGemsModuleName::Controller"
      # ActionController::Base gets a method that allows controllers to include the new behavior
      include YourGemsModuleName::Controller # ActiveSupport::Concern
    end
  end
end

and in lib/your_gem_name/controller.rb:

module YourGemsModuleName
  module Controller
    extend ActiveSupport::Concern

    # note: don't specify included or ClassMethods if unused

    included do
      # anything you would want to do in every controller, for example: add a class attribute
      class_attribute :class_attribute_available_on_every_controller, instance_writer: false
    end

    module ClassMethods
      # notice: no self.method_name here, because this is being extended because ActiveSupport::Concern was extended
      def make_this_controller_fantastic
        before_filter :some_instance_method_available_on_every_controller # to be available on every controller
        after_filter :another_instance_method_available_on_every_controller # to be available on every controller
        include FantasticStuff
      end
    end

    # instance methods to go on every controller go here
    def some_instance_method_available_on_every_controller
      puts "a method available on every controller!"
    end

    def another_instance_method_available_on_every_controller
      puts "another method available on every controller!"
    end

    module FantasticStuff
      extend ActiveSupport::Concern

      # note: don't specify included or ClassMethods if unused

      included do
        class_attribute :class_attribute_only_available_on_fantastic_controllers, instance_writer: false
      end

      module ClassMethods
        # class methods available only if make_this_controller_fantastic is specified in the controller
        def some_fanastic_class_method
          put "a fantastic class method!"
        end
      end

      # instance methods available only if make_this_controller_fantastic is specified in the controller
      def some_fantastic_instance_method
        puts "a fantastic instance method!"
      end

      def another_fantastic_instance_method
        puts "another fantastic instance method!"
      end
    end
  end
end

Answer 1

For this specific kind of functionality I would recommend creating a module in your gem and include that module in your Application Controller

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  include MyCoolModule
end

To add before filters, etc (add this to your module)

def self.included(base)
  base.send(:before_filter, my_method)
end

Update: you may be able to just do base.before_filter :my_method which is cleaner.