Global variable in Rails

Question

I have a feedback form in my Rails application. The feedback form requires initializing of the @support variable, and it should be visible on every page. The initialization is very short:

@support = Support.new(:id => 1)

However it would be nice to have this variable initialized once and access it from everywhere. How is that possible to do?

Answer 1

you can use a helper method (in the application controller) to initialize the support variable . Something like this :

class ApplicationController < ..
   ...
   helper_method :my_var

   def my_var
      @support = Support.new(:id => 1)
   end
   ...

 end

Answer 2

A global variable starts with the dollard sign '$' like :

$support = Support.new(:id => 1)

However, global variables is bad :-) You should read this post by "Simone Carletti".