How to rename a Rails 3 Application

Renaming a Rails 3 application is something you have to think about now. No, really… :)

When you create a new Rails 3.0 app with “rails app_name” Rails will create the application for you like before, but with a major difference.

It will Classify your “app_name” and use this as the Ruby name space for your application.

So if you do:

rails new app_name

Then your Rails application will have sprinklings of <span style="font-weight:bold">{=html}AppName</span>{=html} throughout the tree.

If you later decide that your application should be called something more specific than “AppName” you need to replace out AppName from the following files:

config/application.rb
config/environment.rb
config/environments/development.rb
config/environments/test.rb
config/environments/production.rb
config/routes.rb
config.ru
initializers/secret_token.rb
initializers/session_store.rb

Of course, if you are using TextMate, a simple Project wide search and replace for AppName with your new name, should do the trick. But it is something to be aware of.

blogLater

Mikel

Edited 21 Sept 2010: to update per reader comments below.