[ruby-on-rails-4] NameError: uninitialized constant (rails)

I have a simple model called PhoneNumber:

class PhoneNumber < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates :pnumber, presence: true, on: :create #=> { :message => " cannot be blank" }
  validates :pnumber, numericality: true, on: :create
end

I go to the root folder of the application (the one containing the app sub-folder) and start the console:

rails console --sandbox

When I try to create an empty PhoneNumber (I want to get an error message as the validation shall fail) I am getting the following error message:

2.0.0-p451 :001 > PhoneNumber.new
NameError: uninitialized constant PhoneNumber
from (irb):1
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:90:in `start'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:9:in `start'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/lib/rails/commands/commands_tasks.rb:69:in `console'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/lib/rails/commands/commands_tasks.rb:40:in `run_command!'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/lib/rails/commands.rb:17:in `<top (required)>'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/lib/rails/app_rails_loader.rb:43:in `require'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/lib/rails/app_rails_loader.rb:43:in `block in exec_app_rails'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/lib/rails/app_rails_loader.rb:32:in `loop'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/lib/rails/app_rails_loader.rb:32:in `exec_app_rails'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/lib/rails/cli.rb:5:in `<top (required)>'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/bin/rails:9:in `require'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/gems/railties-4.1.5/bin/rails:9:in `<top (required)>'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/bin/rails:23:in `load'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/bin/rails:23:in `<main>'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/bin/ruby_executable_hooks:15:in `eval'
from /Users/nnikolo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451@railstutorial_rails_4_0/bin/2.2.2.02.02.02.0.2.2.02.222222.2.02.02.0.2.2.022222222222222

It seems the console is not aware of the model. In plain ruby you need to 'require' the file containing the class but I thought that the rails console shall automatically load all models. What is going on here?

This question is related to ruby-on-rails-4 rails-console

The answer is


I started having this issue after upgrading from Rails 5.1 to 5.2
It got solved with:

spring stop
spring binstub --all
spring start
rails s

I had a similar error, but it was because I had created a has_one relationship and subsequently deleted the model that it had_one of. I just forgot to delete the has_one relationship from the remaining model.


If none of the above work, I also have a different approach, as it happened to me in a real scenario.

More specifically using auto-generated Ruby files from Thrift.


In my situation, I had a Module with several classes, so the order is important in this case:

Class A makes use of Class B in the same module. However, Class B was declared after Class A.

Simply making Class B to be declared before Class A solved the issue to me.


Similar with @Michael-Neal.

I had named the controller as singular. app/controllers/product_controller.rb

When I renamed it as plural, error solved. app/controllers/products_controller.rb


In my case, I named a column name type and tried to set its value as UNPREPARED. And I got an error message like this:

Caused by: api_1 | NameError: uninitialized constant UNPREPARED

In rails, column type is reserved:

ActiveRecord::SubclassNotFound: The single-table inheritance mechanism failed to locate the subclass: 'UNPREPARED'. This error is raised because the column 'type' is reserved for storing the class in case of inheritance. Pl ease rename this column if you didn't intend it to be used for storing the inheritance class or overwrite Food.inheritance_column to use another column for that information


I was getting the error:

NameError: uninitialized constant

Then I noticed that I had accidentally created a plural model so I went back and renamed the model file to singular and also changed the class name in the model file to singular and that solved it.


I ran into this also with a file directly in the models directory, and it turns out that I wasn't properly loading up the code on startup. I was able to fix the issue by setting config.eager_load = true in my development.rb file. This made the class available to me in the console


I had the same error. Turns out in my hasty scaffolding I left out the model.rb file.


I had this problem because I changed the name of the class in a model, and it did not match the name of the file.

"Model class names use CamelCase. These are singular, and will map automatically to the plural database table name.

Model files go in app/models/#{singular_model_name}.rb."

https://gist.github.com/iangreenleaf/b206d09c587e8fc6399e#model