Have you ever had the feeling that you were repeating yourself when writing controller code for your Rails app? You were right, because you actually did!

See this example of a basic posts controller in a blog application

PostsController < ActionController::Base
  def index
    @posts = Post.all
  end

  def show
    @post = Post.find(params[:id])
  end

  def new
    @post = Post.new
  end

  def create
    Post.create(params[:post])
  end

  def destroy
    post = Post.find(params[:id])
    post.destroy
  end
end

Every controller that is tied to an ActiveRecord-model has more or less this structure. But why bother with this boilerplate database interaction? You can do better things with your time.

#Autoloader to the rescue!

Autoloader puts the ‘Action’ into ActionController and makes the boring things for you. This is what the above controller looks like when it has been supercharged with Autoloader:

PostsController < ActionController::Base
  autoload_resource :post
  def index
  end

  def show
  end

  def new
  end

  def create
    @post.save
  end

  def destroy
    @post.destroy
  end
end

Yes, the only things you have to do are the writing operations on the database! Concentrate on the critical parts of your app. And if you don’t like how autloader does its job, you can configure it with some powerful configuration options. But beware: some of the options are that badass you’d better ask for your parents’ permission.

Autoloader is still alpha software. We have no automatic tests yet. When we first tried it, Justin Bieber released a new album. Please take care.

Where can I get it?

You can find all important information concerning installation, usage and other goodies in the projects README. Please report any issues you encounter in the issue tracker.

Everything is falling apart!

If you have tried everything to fix your problem by yourself and still have had no luck, you can contact us either using the issue tracker or on Twitter (@LukasSkywalker).