Where to put a before_filter shared between multiple controllers

Question

I have multiple controllers that all use an identical before_filter. In the interests of keeping things dry, where should this method live so that all the controllers can use it? A module doesn't seem like the right place, though I'm not sure why. I can't put it in a base class as the controllers already have different superclasses.

Answer 1

How about putting your before_filter and method in a module and including it in each of the controllers. I'd put this file in the lib folder.

module MyFunctions

  def self.included(base)
    base.before_filter :my_before_filter
  end

  def my_before_filter
    Rails.logger.info "********** YEA I WAS CALLED ***************"
  end
end

Then in your controller, all you would have to do is

class MyController < ActionController::Base
  include MyFunctions
end

Finally, I would ensure that lib is autoloaded. Open config/application.rb and add the following to the class for your application.

config.autoload_paths += %W(#{config.root}/lib)

Answer 2

Something like this can be done.

Class CommonController < ApplicationController
  # before_filter goes here
end

Class MyController < CommonController
end

class MyOtherController < CommonController
end