How to require a file only for console

Question

I've a Ruby class that I will use only for console, it monkey patches ActiveRecord::Base with some shortcuts like ua for update_attribute and I don't want to load it when running rails server but only when running the rails console command.

What is the way to achieve this?

Answer 1

rails console defines Rails::Console

So you can do

if defined?(Rails::Console)
  # this runs only in rails console
end

Another approach would be to use config/application.rb:

module MyApplication
  class Application < Rails::Application
    console do
      require 'my_console_file'
    end
  end
end