Forcing rails to autoload class - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have several small classes that are in a single file in /app/models, similar to:
# /app/models/little_class.rb
class LittleClass; ...do stuff; end;
class AnotherLittleClass; ...do stuff; end;
Rails only seems geared to autoload classes in files reflecting the class name. So referencing AnotherLittleClass outside of the file raises "unitialized constant" errors as below until LittleClass is referenced:
irb(main):001:0> AnotherLittleClass
NameError: uninitialized constant AnotherLittleClass
irb(main):02:0> LittleClass
=> LittleClass
irb(main):03:0> AnotherLittleClass
=> LittleClass2
It would be a pain and messy to split them into individual files. Is there a way to autoload these classes, so referencing AnotherLittleClass without LittleClass doesnt raise an error?

Answer 1

You could put them into a module and use them within this namespace SomeLittleClasses::LittleClass.do_something
# /app/models/some_little_classes.rb
module SomeLittleClasses
class LittleClass
def self.do_something
"Hello World!"
end
end
class AnotherLittleClass
def self.do_something
"Hello World!"
end
end
end

Answer 2

Try this trick:
1.9.2p312 :001 > AnotherLittleClass.new
# => NameError: uninitialized constant AnotherLittleClass
1.9.2p312 :002 > autoload :AnotherLittleClass, File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/app/models/little_class.rb"
# => nil
1.9.2p312 :003 > AnotherLittleClass.new
# => #<AnotherLittleClass:0xa687d24>

Answer 3

These are your choices, as I see it:
split your file up into one file per class, put them in a dir named according to the rails convention (SomeClass => some_class.rb) and in a startup file (say, create a file in config/initializers), call:
autoload_paths Rails.application.config.root + "/path/to/lib"
add something like this to a startup file:
%W[
Class1 Class2
Class3 Class4 Class4
].map(&:to_sym).each dp |klass|
autoload klass,Rails.application.config.root + "/path/to/lib/file"
end
This of course will have to be updated each time a new class is added to the file.
Move all of the classes into a module/class namespace and call autoload to add it as above
just load the whole file up-front in a startup file with require. Ask yourself: does the extra effort warrant delaying the load of this file?

Answer 4

The following file app/models/statistic.rb is given :
class Statistic
# some model code here
end
class UsersStatistic < Statistic; end
class CommentsStatistic < Statistic; end
class ConnectionsStatistic < Statistic; end
Create a file config/initializers/autoload_classes.rb and add the following code:
# Autoloading subclasses that are in the same file
# This is the normal way to load single classes
#
# autoload :UsersStatistic, 'statistic'
# autoload :CommentsStatistic, 'statistic'
# autoload :ConnectionsStatistic, 'statistic'
# This is the most dynamic way for production and development environment.
Statistic.subclasses.each do |klass|
autoload klass.to_s.to_sym, 'statistic'
end
# This does the same but loads all subclasses automatically.
# Useful only in production environment because every file-change
# needs a restart of the rails server.
#
# Statistic.subclasses