When working on larger projects the RAILS_ROOT/app folder structure can be a little restrictive. Lately I’ve taken to adding more sub-directories into RAILS_ROOT/app like, observers, mailers and presenters (check out ActivePresenter and Presenter Pattern if you’ve never heard of it). It’s a simple trivial addition to the folder structure that allows me to keep my sanity. Instead of sifting through 40+ files in the models folder I can quickly drill down to what I’m looking for.

Luckily, Rails is nice enough to have a simple mechanism to do this. Open your environment.rb file and look for the lines that read:

  # Add additional load paths for your own custom dirs
  # config.load_paths += %W( #{RAILS_ROOT}/extras )

Simply un-comment the second line and replace it with something like this:

  # Add additional load paths for your own custom dirs
  config.load_paths += %W( #{RAILS_ROOT}/app/clients #{RAILS_ROOT}/app/observers #{RAILS_ROOT}/app/presenters #{RAILS_ROOT}/app/mailers )

Very similar to moving the Ruby files around, I have also taken to moving some of the views around, specifically, mailer views. I like to keep them near the mailer model, and not in the RAILS_ROOT/app/views path.

This change is also quite easy thanks to the extensibility of the Rails framework. Near the end of your environment.rb file add the following line:

  config.action_mailer.template_root = "#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/mailers"