Railtie is the core of the Rails framework and provides several hooks to extend Rails and/or modify the initialization process.

Every major component of Rails (Action Mailer, Action Controller, Action View, Active Record and Active Resource) is a Railtie. Each of them is responsible for their own initialization. This makes Rails itself absent of any component hooks, allowing other components to be used in place of any of the Rails defaults.

Developing a Rails extension does not require any implementation of Railtie, but if you need to interact with the Rails framework during or after boot, then Railtie is needed.

For example, an extension doing any of the following would require Railtie:

  • creating initializers

  • configuring a Rails framework for the application, like setting a generator

  • adding config.* keys to the environment

  • setting up a subscriber with ActiveSupport::Notifications

  • adding rake tasks

Creating your Railtie

To extend Rails using Railtie, create a Railtie class which inherits from Rails::Railtie within your extension’s namespace. This class must be loaded during the Rails boot process.

The following example demonstrates an extension which can be used with or without Rails.

# lib/my_gem/railtie.rb
module MyGem
  class Railtie < Rails::Railtie
  end
end

# lib/my_gem.rb
require 'my_gem/railtie' if defined?(Rails)

Initializers

To add an initialization step from your Railtie to Rails boot process, you just need to create an initializer block:

class MyRailtie < Rails::Railtie
  initializer "my_railtie.configure_rails_initialization" do
    # some initialization behavior
  end
end

If specified, the block can also receive the application object, in case you need to access some application specific configuration, like middleware:

class MyRailtie < Rails::Railtie
  initializer "my_railtie.configure_rails_initialization" do |app|
    app.middleware.use MyRailtie::Middleware
  end
end

Finally, you can also pass :before and :after as option to initializer, in case you want to couple it with a specific step in the initialization process.

Configuration

Inside the Railtie class, you can access a config object which contains configuration shared by all railties and the application:

class MyRailtie < Rails::Railtie
  # Customize the ORM
  config.app_generators.orm :my_railtie_orm

  # Add a to_prepare block which is executed once in production
  # and before each request in development
  config.to_prepare do
    MyRailtie.setup!
  end
end

Loading rake tasks and generators

If your railtie has rake tasks, you can tell Rails to load them through the method ::rake_tasks:

class MyRailtie < Rails::Railtie
  rake_tasks do
    load "path/to/my_railtie.tasks"
  end
end

By default, Rails load generators from your load path. However, if you want to place your generators at a different location, you can specify in your Railtie a block which will load them during normal generators lookup:

class MyRailtie < Rails::Railtie
  generators do
    require "path/to/my_railtie_generator"
  end
end

Application, Plugin and Engine

A Rails::Engine is nothing more than a Railtie with some initializers already set. And since Rails::Application and Rails::Plugin are engines, the same configuration described here can be used in all three.

Be sure to look at the documentation of those specific classes for more information.

Namespace
Methods
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Included Modules
Constants
ABSTRACT_RAILTIES = %w(Rails::Railtie Rails::Plugin Rails::Engine Rails::Application)
 
Class Public methods
abstract_railtie?()
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 153
def abstract_railtie?
  ABSTRACT_RAILTIES.include?(name)
end
console(&blk)
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 141
def console(&blk)
  @load_console ||= []
  @load_console << blk if blk
  @load_console
end
generators(&blk)
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 147
def generators(&blk)
  @generators ||= []
  @generators << blk if blk
  @generators
end
inherited(base)
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 128
def inherited(base)
  unless base.abstract_railtie?
    base.send(:include, Railtie::Configurable)
    subclasses << base
  end
end
railtie_name(name = nil)
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 157
def railtie_name(name = nil)
  @railtie_name = name.to_s if name
  @railtie_name ||= generate_railtie_name(self.name)
end
rake_tasks(&blk)
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 135
def rake_tasks(&blk)
  @rake_tasks ||= []
  @rake_tasks << blk if blk
  @rake_tasks
end
subclasses()
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 124
def subclasses
  @subclasses ||= []
end
Class Protected methods
generate_railtie_name(class_or_module)
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 163
def generate_railtie_name(class_or_module)
  ActiveSupport::Inflector.underscore(class_or_module).gsub("/", "_")
end
Instance Public methods
config()
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 170
def config
  @config ||= Railtie::Configuration.new
end
eager_load!()
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 174
def eager_load!
end
load_console(app=self)
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 177
def load_console(app=self)
  self.class.console.each { |block| block.call(app) }
end
load_generators(app=self)
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 193
def load_generators(app=self)
  self.class.generators.each { |block| block.call(app) }
end
load_tasks(app=self)
# File railties/lib/rails/railtie.rb, line 181
def load_tasks(app=self)
  extend Rake::DSL if defined? Rake::DSL
  self.class.rake_tasks.each { |block| block.call(app) }

  # load also tasks from all superclasses
  klass = self.class.superclass
  while klass.respond_to?(:rake_tasks)
    klass.rake_tasks.each { |t| self.instance_exec(app, &t) }
    klass = klass.superclass
  end
end