Why are rake tasks stored in lib/tasks/?

Question

My understanding of the lib/ directory in rails is that it stores non-domain specific code as a best practice.

However, my Rake scripts are very specific to my domain. They do things like create new models.

So is there a better place than lib/tasks/ to store domain-specific rake scripts, or am I missing something here?

Answer 1

I like this idea, and I agree - lib at one point was very much a junk drawer, and as a Rails community we've moved some of the junk away, but yes Rake tasks are usually very specific application logic.

In your Rakefile all you have to do is load your new Rakefiles (exercise for the reader: iterate the files in the folder instead of specifying it explicitly.

Example:

require File.expand_path('../config/application', __FILE__)

Rails.application.load_tasks

load('app/tasks/my_task.rake') # <--- my custom task!!!

Answer 2

The above is correct, but you should add the following to prevent the zeitwerk from creating the Tasks constant. (ignore if not using zeitwerk loader)

Rails.autoloaders.main.ignore('app/tasks');

You may check this in the console by calling Tasks, it should not be defined.

Another option might be to add rake tasks inside /tasks instead of app/tasks