Ruby on Rails: How do you explicitly define plural names and singular names in Rails?

Question

For example, I'm using "Bonus" as my model, so I'd expect "bonuses" to be the plural form and "bonus" to be the singular form.

However, in Ruby, this results in:

"bonus".pluralize # bonus
"bonuses".singularize # bonuse

So, when I do a "has_many :bonuses", for example, it doesn't use the Bonus.rb model (since Ruby expects a Bonuse.rb model instead). Is there a way to correct that in Ruby on Rails somehow such that "bonuses" acts as the plural form for the model bonus.rb?

Answer 1

In config/initializers, you will find a file called inflections.rb. There are some instructions in here, but you will want something along the lines of:

ActiveSupport::Inflector.inflections do |inflect|
  inflect.irregular 'bonus', 'bonuses'
end

Answer 2

Just to back up bcarlso, more on Inflector can be found here:

http://4loc.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/inflector-rails-pluralization/

Note that the position of the Inflector.inflections block is important and, as noted in the link reference, must be after the Initializer.run block.

Answer 3

I believe you use the Inflector in your environment.rb (memory's a bit sketchy though) If I remember correctly you put it in a block

Inflector.inflections { | i | i.irregular 'bonus', 'bonuses' }