Ruby on Rails: Global Helper method for all controllers

Question

How do I set up a method that I want accessible from all controllers?

Sticking the method in application_helper just makes it available to the views

Answer 1

You can add the method to ApplicationController . All the other controllers subclass ApplicationController , so will be able to call the method.

You'll want to make the method protected so that it is only visible to subclasses and isn't available as a web-accessible action.

Answer 2

You can include ApplicationHelper in your controllers (or base ApplicationController) to make the helper methods available.

You can also include the following line in your ApplicationController to include all helpers:

helper :all

Answer 3

Stick it into lib . Helpers are meant to be used in views; if you have application-specific libraries (and by "libraries" I mean any code that your application uses, and by "application-specific" anything that doesn't belong into vendor ), lib is the place to go.

Answer 4

Here is very good example

http://railscasts.com/episodes/64-custom-helper-modules

Answer 5

In rails 3 you can use: the view_context object in your controller to access view helper methods. For example,

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
   def some_method
     view_context.some_view_helper_method
   end
end

module ApplicationHelper
  def some_view_helper_method
  end
end

Check out this: http://wowkhmer.com/2011/09/09/use-view-helper-methods-in-rails-3-controller/