In Ruby on Rails, to extend the String class, where should the code be put in?

Question

If on Ruby on Rails, I need to add a method called

class String
  def capitalize_first
    # ...
  end
end

and wonder where should the file go to? (which directory and filename, and is any initialize code needed?) This is for a Rails 3.0.6 project.

Answer 1

I always add a core_ext directory in my lib dir.

Create an initializer for loading the custom extensions (for example: config/initializers/core_exts.rb). And add the following line in it:

Dir[File.join(Rails.root, "lib", "core_ext", "*.rb")].each {|l| require l }

and have your extension like:

lib/core_ext/string.rb

class String
  def capitalize_first
    # ...
  end
end