Ruby on Rails: shared method between models

Question

If a few of my models have a privacy column, is there a way I can write one method shared by all the models, lets call it is_public?

so, I'd like to be able to do object_var.is_public?

Answer 1

One possible way is to put shared methods in a module like this (RAILS_ROOT/lib/shared_methods.rb)

module SharedMethods
  def is_public?
    # your code
  end
end

Then you need two include this module in every model that should have this methods (i.e. app/models/your_model.rb)

class YourModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  include SharedMethods
end

Answer 2

You can also do this by inheriting the models from a common ancestor which includes the shared methods.

class BaseModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  def is_public?
    # blah blah
   end
end

class ChildModel < BaseModel
end

In practice, jigfox's approach often works out better, so don't feel obligated to use inheritance merely out of love for OOP theory :)