Where should Rails 3 custom validators be stored?

I'开发者_Python百科ve seen docs/websites show that custom validators should go in a /lib or /lib/validators directory of a project. I've found (by reading an answer to another post) that they only seem to work in config/initializers. Does anyone know, or have a pointer to official documentation that shows where custom validators should live?

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If you place your custom validators in app/validators they will be automatically loaded without needing to alter your config/application.rb file.

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If you add this to your /config/application.rb file:

config.autoload_paths += %W["#{config.root}/lib/validators/"]

Then Rails will automatically load your validators on start up (just like /config/initializers/), but you keep the clean structure of having your validators in one nice, well named spot.

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lib/validators seems by far the cleanest. However you may need to load them in before your models, so probably from an initializer.

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Here's the official docs about custom validations. AFAIK its a good practice to keep them in the relevant models.