From: Daniel Sheppard <daniels@...>
Date: 2005-11-09T09:47:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Better way to build string

I'm guessing your code either includes name/value pairs for html/xml tag
attributes or for a query string. I don't see why those two things would
be put in the same function, but if you REALLY want them to spend their
lives together:

return "" if properties.empty?
if prop_type == "tag"
	properties.map {|item| " #{item.name}=#{item.value}"}
	#or alternatively:
	#" " + properties.map {|item|
"#{item.name}=#{item.value}"}.join(" ")
else
	"?" properties.map {|item| "#{item.name}=#{item.value}"}
end

If you're using this function for what I think you're using it for...
make sure you escape things properly. For the query strings, use:

require 'uri'
"?" + properties.map {|item| "#{item.name}=#{URI.escape(item.value)}"}

For the attributes, make sure that you escape the values to remove &,"
and ' and any other character that doesn't belong in your encoding. Even
better, use something like Builder if you're building up XML/XHTML.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: marcus [mailto:m-lists@bristav.se] 
> Sent: Wednesday, 9 November 2005 5:41 AM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Better way to build string
> 
> I'm trying to build a query string based on an array of 
> properties. Is there a shorter/nicer way to do the following?
> 
>    def build_query_string(properties, prop_type)
>      result = ""
> 
>      properties.each do |item|
>        if prop_type == "tag"
>          result += " #{item.name}=#{item.value}"
>        else
>          if result == ""
>            result = "?"
>          else
>            result += "&"
>          end
>          result += "#{item.name}=#{item.value}"
>        end
>      end
> 
>      result
>    end
> 
> /Marcus
> 
> 
> 
> 
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