Special Notes Lookup in Rails

Posted on November 6, 2012  •  1 minutes  • 125 words

Add special notes to your source code comments in Rails to later remind you of tasks you need to complete:

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  # TODO add named_scopes
  # FIXME method A is broken
  # OPTIMIZE improve the code 
	
  has_many :comments
  ....
end

Some programming IDEs, such as Aptana Studio 3 (free), will even highlight the key notation part.

Now, from the command line, you can list these special notes with a rake task:

$ rake notes
app/models/article.rb:
  * [2] [TODO] add named_scopes
  * [3] [FIXME] method A is broken
  * [4] [OPTIMIZE] improve the code

You can also list notes of each kind individually with rake notes:todo, rake notes:fixme and rake notes:optimize.

You can even list your own, custom notes with rake notes:custom ANNOTATION=MYANNO.