From: "Ara.T.Howard" <ahoward@...>
Date: 2004-07-01T01:02:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Opinions on library interface design?

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, Kirk Haines wrote:

> Kansas, if you are unaware, is an object-relational mapping library.  Result
> sets from queries are returned as hash-like objects.  However, be object
> knows where it came from, and updating the object causes the underlying
> database data to be updated transparently.  This lets one manipulate the
> data without worrying about writing SQL.

i was unaware - sounds super cool - i'll check it out today.

<snip op question>

> So....what is a nice, elegant way to tell select() that I want the result
> set back as hashes, or arrays (or arrayfields), or structs, or whatever,
> instead of the default db coupled objects?

i like the idea of NOT using 'select' since, in essence these object have not
been 'selected' as our working set - we would only be looking at them.  to me
that suggests a completely new method name, something like

   def browse criteria, as = Hash
     cb = block_given?
     accum = []

     query(criteria) do |intermediate|
       res =
         case as
           when Hash
             intermediate.to_h
           when Array
             intermediate.to_a
           when Struct
             intermediate.to_su
           else
             as.new intermediate
         end

       cb ? yield res : accum << res
     end

     cb ? self : accum
   end

which provide some canned types to be returns and would provide user
defineable types to be returned (case - else).

thoughts...

-a
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