Rails ActiveSupport Inflections

We know, In Rails the Inflector transforms words from singular to plural, class names to table names .

The default inflections for pluralization, singularization, and uncountable words are kept in inflections.rb .

In this post, we will go through one example explaining the inflections .

Consider, leaves_controller with Leave model . For this controller routes generated are as follows -

new_leafe   GET    /leaves/new(.:format)      leaves#new
edit_leafe  GET    /leaves/:id/edit(.:format) leaves#edit
leafe       GET    /leaves/:id(.:format)      leaves#show

> 'leaves'.singularize
=> "leafe"

here, the singularize format of ‘leaves’ is taken as ‘leafe’ .

Suppose, we want to change the singularize format to ‘leaf’, then -

Add rule in config/initializers/inflections.rb

ActiveSupport::Inflector.inflections do |inflect|
  inflect.irregular 'leaf', 'leaves'
end

Now, check routes for same -

new_leaf   GET    /leaves/new(.:format)        leaves#new
edit_leaf  GET    /leaves/:id/edit(.:format)   leaves#edit
leaf       GET    /leaves/:id(.:format)        leaves#show

> 'leaves'.singularize
=> "leaf"

It Works! In this way, by adding inflection rules, we can override naming conventions in rails .