From: Ben Giddings <bg-rubytalk@...>
Date: 2004-07-03T00:29:59+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby-dev summary 23763-23840

Minero Aoki wrote:
> [ruby-dev:23784] URI()
> 
>   TANAKA Akira proposed a new global method URI(), to construct an URI
>   object.  With this method, you can write HTTP GET program as below:
> 
>     print URI("http://www.example.com/").read
> 
>   This program is better than `open("http://....").read' because it
>   properly closes IO objects.
> 
>   Here are some opinions:  (+ : approval, - : objection)
> 
>     + There are similar methods such as Integer(), String(), etc.
>     + URI is a name, literal-like syntax seems good.
>     - URI.[] is better because URI() pollutes the global name space.
>     - String(obj) calls obj.to_s.  Integer(obj) calls obj.to_i.
>       But URI(obj) does not call obj.to_uri.
>       (Note that Complex(obj) does not call obj.to_complex, too.)
>     - A method name which begins with a capital looks bad.

I like the idea of a simple way to deal with URIs, but I agree with all 
the objections this idea.

Is there some reason it couldn't be a factory method of a URI class, 
making the example like:

URI.create("http://www.example.com").read

The factory method, 'create' could return URI type objects, customized 
for that particular  URI.

For a local file:

irb> URI.create("file:///path/to/local/file.txt")
=> #<File:/path/to/local/file.txt>

For a HTTP connection it would return a HTTP object, for gopher a Gopher 
object, etc.

Sure, it's an extra 6 keystrokes (one for the dot, 5 for create) but it 
seems to satisfy the objections.  Maybe someone has a better option for 
the factory method name?

Ben