rails: Engines don't seem to load config/initializers

I seem to have found either a bug in Engines or a mistake in the Rails Guides about Engines. I figured this out after hours of trying to wrestle the engine into using minitest-rails as a generator, thinking it was minitest, when it turns out to be rails. 😢

PROBLEM: *.rb files in the initializers folder of the engine itself (not the dummy app) are not loaded.

The Rails Guide about engines references this at http://guides.rubyonrails.org/engines.html#general-engine-configuration

If you wish to use an initializer — code that should run before the engine is loaded — the place for it is the config/initializers folder.

It seems like either Rails or the Guide isn’t doing the right thing. Hopefully Rails in this case, so we can use the config/initializers folder as expected. 😄

REPRODUTION: If you make a config/initializers/generators.rb in the engine base directory, it is not loaded.

I tried it with several different entries

Rails.application.config.generators do |g|
  g.test_framework :mini_test, :spec => true, :fixture => false
end

and then

EngineName::Engine.config.generators do |g|
  g.test_framework :mini_test, :spec => true, :fixture => false
end

and then finally attempting to raise an error.

raise "this file isn't being loaded"

MORE INFO: I have tested this with both --full and --mountable with rails plugin new. From a brand new “new”, this is the result of 1) adding minitest-rails to the gemspec, 2) doing bundle, and then 3) attempting to generate a model.

      # rails generate model user title:string --spec  
      invoke  active_record
      create    db/migrate/20140324235224_create_users.rb
      create    app/models/user.rb
      invoke    test_unit
      create      test/models/user_test.rb
      create      test/fixtures/users.yml

And on a regular rails new application following the same process:

      # rails generate model user title:string --spec  
      invoke  active_record
      create    db/migrate/20140324235436_create_users.rb
      create    app/models/user.rb
      invoke    mini_test
      create      test/models/user_test.rb

WORKAROUND: Putting all configuration settings in lib/engine_name/engine.rb will work properly. Setting the config.generators in that location works perfectly, as seen here:

module EngineName
  class Engine < ::Rails::Engine
    isolate_namespace EngineName

    config.generators do |g|
      g.test_framework :mini_test, :spec => true, :fixture => false
    end
  end
end

Rails 4.0.4, ruby 2.1.1p76 (2014-02-24 revision 45161) [x86_64-darwin12.0]

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 10 years ago
Comments: 17 (10 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

I haven’t checked if this issue is fixed in rails 5, yet. But I’m leaving a comment here for others still on rails 4.2 looking for a solution, since I found this thread when googling the problem.

Workaround

Define inflections in my_engine/config/initializers/inflections.rb:

# my_engine/config/initializers/inflections.rb

ActiveSupport::Inflector.inflections do |inflect|
  inflect.irregular 'regatta', 'regattas'
end

Require the inflections initializer in the engine.rb:

# my_engine/lib/my_engine/engine.rb

require_relative '../../config/initializers/inflections'

module MyEngine
  class Engine < ::Rails::Engine
    # ...
  end
end

Use the generator as expected: bin/rails g model Regatta

fiedl on Jun 8, 2017

I can confirm the OP’s comments. The reason it wasn’t reproduced above is that the problem shows up when running a generator, not when loading the application, which is what the commenter tried to do.

In my case I was trying generate a model that confused the default inflector…

$ bin/rails g model Regatta
[WARNING] The model name 'Regatta' was recognized as a plural, using the singular 'Regattum' instead. Override with --force-plural or setup custom inflection rules for this noun before running the generator.
      invoke  active_record
      create    db/migrate/20150902141927_create_regatta.rb
      create    app/models/regattum.rb
      invoke    test_unit
      create      test/models/regattum_test.rb
      create      test/fixtures/regatta.yml

If I try to do this with an application I get the same result, but I can fix it by putting the inflector in config/initializers/inflections.rb. However with an engine, I instead have to put it in lib/my_engine/engine.rb:

module MyEngine
  class Engine < ::Rails::Engine
    isolate_namespace MyEngine
    ::ActiveSupport::Inflector.inflections do |inflect|
      inflect.irregular 'regatta', 'regattas'
    end
  end
end

MarkMT on Sep 2, 2015

@johannesE thanks man, that explains it 😃

u007 on Oct 4, 2016

FYI: I had similar problems with a custom initializer, but it turned out that it was just spring messing with me.

johannesE on Oct 3, 2016

hi, any updates on this? im trying to set my template engine to slim , or at least hopefully engine is using root app todo so, but i could not find any initialiser todo so too in generator…

u007 on Apr 4, 2016