CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubynaming-conventions
shankardevy
shankardevy

Reputation: 4370

Common convention to name a File class in ruby

In ruby, it's pretty common to see variable named klass that holds the name of the class name. Since class is a reserved keyword, a misspelled word klass serves the purpose.

I'm looking for a similar solution for class that I need to define for a file object.

Obviously

class File
end

won't work for me because it will start monkey patching the ruby's File class which I don't intend.

Is there a name in practice that is commonly used for File class? I stumbled upon the idea of using Fyle but not sure if this is a great idea and wanted to check with the community :)

EDIT 1 Example of my usage.

In my rails app, I have a Product model which has many files. There are other models that also have file associations.

So I want to declare my associations like this

class Product
  has_many :files, as: :file_attachable
end

class File # I cannot use `File` because it conflicts with ruby's `File`
  belongs_to :file_attachable, polymorphic: true
end

Upvotes: 1

Views: 303

Answers (1)

joelparkerhenderson
joelparkerhenderson

Reputation: 35443

Use a module namespace. This keeps your File class separate from Ruby's standard File class.

For example:

 module Foo
   class File
   end
 end

Usage:

 f = Foo::File.new

For Rails ActiveRecord, you can do:

 module Foo
   class File < ActiveRecord::Base
   end
 end

Rails will automatically use the table name based on the class that inherits from Base, and not based on the module name:

Foo::File.table_name #=> "files"

You can provide your own table_name if you prefer to customize:

 module Foo
   class File < ActiveRecord::Base
     self.table_name = "foo_files"
   end
 end

Associations work the same way:

module Foo
  class User
    has_many :files  # class is Foo::File
  end
end

You can provide your own class_name if you prefer to customize:

module Foo
  class User
     has_many :files, class_name: "Foo::File"
  end
end

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions