From: Jeffrey Moss <jeff@...>
Date: 2005-01-04T09:37:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Inheritance of class variables

I remember seeing this topic posted to the list a while ago. I'm trying to 
make a similarly complex model, and its not clear if it is going to work, or 
if there is a simpler solution for that matter. For the car example I agree 
that passing the model of the car into the constructor makes sense, but here 
is my example.

I have a class "ActionSequence" for use with rails that has functions "next" 
and "previous", I want to pass into the constructor the current action and 
controller, so this is what ActionSequence looks like:

class ActionSequence
  def initialize(action, controller)
    @action = action
    @controller = controller
  end

  def next
    action = sequence[ sequence.index(@action) + 1 ]
    process_action(action)
  end

  def previous
    action = sequence[ sequence.index(@action) - 1 ]
    process_action(action)
  end

  protected
  def sequence
    self.class.instance_eval { @sequence }
  end

  private
  def process_action(action)
    if self.respond_to?(action, true)
      return self.send(action.id)
    else
      return action
    end
  end
end

And an example of a typical usable child class is as follows:

class OrderSequence < ActionSequence
  @@sequence = ['order_selection',
                             'account_setup',
                             'personal_information']
    def order_selection
        "error_page"
    end
end

So before anything is done, the action will initialize the sequence to the 
right spot, and inside my "view" I can call next and previous as a helper 
and it refers to OrderSequence.next and OrderSequence.previous, which 
traverses the @@sequence class variable, and it will check for a callback 
function for additional logic.

But this doens't work. I haven't been able to figure very much out about how 
instance_eval works on Class objects. If anybody can offer any advise, or if 
anybody has done a similar sort of thing, I'd appreciate some input.

-Jeff

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Klemme" <bob.news@gmx.net>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 10:16 AM
Subject: Re: Inheritance of class variables


>
> "Eustaquio Rangel de Oliveira Jr." <eustaquiorangel@yahoo.com> schrieb im
> Newsbeitrag news:41D4003E.2060503@yahoo.com...
>> Hello there.
>>
>> I was talking with chris2 and matju on the irc channel and they gave me
>> good explanation about this point, but I'd like to share it with you and
>> discuss something about it.
>>
>> I was asking about if, when defined on a parent class, a class variable
>> overwrites the class variables with the same name on it's children.
>
> The short answer is the one that David gave implicite: just don't use
> them.  IMHO you can safely ignore this language feature without loosing
> much but gaining a lot (understandability of code etc.).
>
> As Guy pointed out, you should really be counting the number of cars in
> the individual car classes.  That's what he's doing with his instance
> variable accesses.
>
> I would probably model your example completely different, because Honda
> and Ford are really instances of CarBuilder not really sub classes.  So
> this is the result and suddenly we don't need class vars any more:
>
> class CarBuilder
>  attr_reader :name, :total_of_cars
>
>  def initialize(name)
>    @name = name
>    @total_of_cars = 0
>  end
>
>  def build
>    puts "#{name} builds another car"
>    @total_of_cars += 1
>  end
> end
>
> h = CarBuilder.new "Honda"
> f = CarBuilder.new "Ford"
>
> h.total_of_cars
> f.total_of_cars
>
> h.build
> h.build
> h.build
> f.build
>
> h.total_of_cars
> f.total_of_cars
>
>
> ?> h = CarBuilder.new "Honda"
> => #<CarBuilder:0x101865d0 @name="Honda", @total_of_cars=0>
>>> f = CarBuilder.new "Ford"
> => #<CarBuilder:0x10183af8 @name="Ford", @total_of_cars=0>
>>>
> ?> h.total_of_cars
> => 0
>>> f.total_of_cars
> => 0
>>>
> ?> h.build
> Honda builds another car
> => 1
>>> h.build
> Honda builds another car
> => 2
>>> h.build
> Honda builds another car
> => 3
>>> f.build
> Ford builds another car
> => 1
>>>
> ?> h.total_of_cars
> => 3
>>> f.total_of_cars
> => 1
>
> Regards
>
>    robert
>
>