Garbage Burrito!

One thing that Rails isn't particularly good at is organization of large projects.  There's one controllers directory, one models directory, etc.  As Doodlekit started to grow I tried to find ways to keep this in check.  

I've been using Engines for a couple of years and I've found it way to cumbersome for just organizing code.  I looked into Namespacing, but I don't want to have the namespaces in the URLs.  All I want is to be able to organize code into subdirectories.

Right now I just need one extra subdirectory for Addons. Here's what my directory structure looks like.

app
-- controllers
---- sites_controller.rb
---- ...
---- addons
------ forms_controller.rb
------ ...
-- models
---- site.rb
---- ...
---- addons
------ form.rb
------ ...
-- views
---- sites
---- ...
---- addons
------ forms
------ ....

Just like you would have with namespacing, but I'm not actually namespacing.  To get this to work you only need to add a few lines to your environment.rb file.

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|

    ....
    
    config.load_paths += %W(
      #{RAILS_ROOT}/app/controllers/addons
      #{RAILS_ROOT}/app/models/addons
      #{RAILS_ROOT}/app/helpers/addons
    )

    config.controller_paths += %W(
      #{RAILS_ROOT}/app/controllers/addons
    );

    .....
    
end

ActionController::Base.view_paths.insert(1, "app/views/addons")