From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2004-07-09T00:44:57+09:00
Subject: Re: best practice in ruby

On Thursday 08 July 2004 03:48, Florian Weber wrote:
>
> the helper methods like editable_content are defined in my template
> class.
>
> now comes the real question: the helper methods can be used in two
> ways creating the objects which represent the editable_content (and
> saving
> it as a active record) and during the rendering, where the
> editable_content
> method will fill in the real content.
>
> would i just create something like:
>
> MyRenderingTemplateClass.new(my_template_object).render

I would protect the data in a class designed primarily to save/load from an 
"active record" (whatever that is in your program).  I would create a public 
initializer for the class so it can be created at any time, and I would give 
it a save method for saving.  I would create a class factory method for the 
load function, and a public global method for rendering:

class MyClass
  def initialize
  end

  def save
  end

  def MyClass::load(record_id)
    return new_myclass_instance
  end
end

def render_myclass(myclass_instance)
end

The render method might have a better home, but from what I could gather from 
your post, a simple public method should do fine.  I'm not sure what sort of 
data you are dealing with, but if you can present it as a hash, with named 
keys and such, you might also provide a [] method and have the render method 
simply treat its parameter like a hash; try to make it generic, so you can 
test it disconnected from the class itself, or possibly re-use it elsewhere.

	Sean O'Dell