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 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 2

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 3

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.