Revisiting Rails::Application

In previous chapters, we discussed Rails::Engine and how it exhibits several behaviors similar to a Rails application. When we look at the Rails source code, we find the following:

​ 
​module​ Rails
​ 
​class​ Application < Engine
​ 
​# ...​
​ 
​end​
​ 
​end​

The Rails::Application class inherits from Rails::Engine! This means an application can do everything an engine does, plus has some specific behavior:

  • An application is responsible for all bootstrapping (for example, loading Active Support, setting up load paths, and configuring the logger).

  • An application has its own router and middleware stack (as we discussed in ​Middleware Stacks​).

  • An application should load and initialize ...

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