CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsruby-on-rails-4
user3454580
user3454580

Reputation:

Can i make Rails this code more elegant?

I have this class:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  attr_accessor :name, :email, :hr_id

  def initialize(attributes = {:name => "Missing Name",:email => "Missing Email",:hr_id => "Missing HR ID"})
      @name = attributes[:name]
      @email = attributes[:email]
      @hr_id = attributes[:hr_id]
  end

  def print_employee
    "Employee No: #{@hr_id} - #{@name} (#{@email})"
  end
end

And i use it like this: 

def help
    employee = User.new
    employee.name = "Dude"
    employee.email  = "[email protected]"
    employee.hr_id = "129836561"
    @employee = employee.print_employee
end

My question is, how can i make the code in help shorter and more elegant?

I tried:

employee = User.new('dude','[email protected]','129836561')
@employee = employee.print_employee

But i got errors.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 103

Answers (3)

apneadiving
apneadiving

Reputation: 115541

Do this:

class UserBuilder

  attr_reader :params

  def initialize(params = {})
    @params = params
  end

  def build
    User.new(default_params.merge(params))
  end

  def default_params
    {
      :name => "Missing Name",
      :email => "Missing Email",
      :hr_id => "Missing HR ID"
    }
  end
end

Then:

UserBuilder.new.build

Or:

UserBuilder.new({:name => 'foo'}).build

Upvotes: 1

jvnill
jvnill

Reputation: 29599

You are looking for after_initialize and/or after_find callbacks. See the docs

after_initialize :set_default_values

private

def set_default_values
  self.name ||= 'Missing name'
end

NOTE

As apneadiving has mentioned, this is not the correct way to approach your problem but I think this is the best answer to your question how to make the code more elegant. For best practice, search for service classes like apneadiving's answer and how to use them in your controller to set default values.

Upvotes: 3

user456814
user456814

Reputation:

So I did a Google search for something like "ActiveRecord default values", and one of the things I found was this Ruby gem that's supposed to set this up for you, so it might be worth checking out: default_value_for.

Example usage from the docs:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  default_value_for :name, "(no name)"
  default_value_for :last_seen do
    Time.now
  end
end

u = User.new
u.name       # => "(no name)"
u.last_seen  # => Mon Sep 22 17:28:38 +0200 2008

Upvotes: 0

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