From: Devin Mullins <twifkak@...>
Date: 2005-12-16T16:08:05+09:00
Subject: [ANN] scoped_require 0.0

... and from the substratum, it arises ...

One-liner: scoped_require provides an optional parameter to 
Kernel#require to allow you to shove the created modules/classes into 
some sandboxy container module. I use it to prevent namespace collision 
with an external library. It's a hack. Heed the version number.

Example usage:
    require 'rubygems'
    require_gem 'rubyful_soup' # luckily this doesn't have autorequire set
    require 'rubyful_soup', :module => :Soup # here's the magic
    assert_equal 'constant', defined? Soup::BeautifulSoup

Browse or get at:

    http://opensvn.csie.org/twifkak/trunk/scoped_require/scoped_require.rb

See the unit tests for usage. If you wanna run the unit tests, export 
the whole scoped_require directory. And have the rubyful_soup gem 
installed. Weirdo.

Several-liner:

So, I was writing a Rails app, and I was using RubyfulSoup to parse in 
some documents and feed some metadata into the database. Hoorah. (Thanks 
for the library, by the way!)

Then, I decided, "I should implement folksonomy!" As any standard human 
would do, I created a model object called Tag, and went on creating my 
tagging functionality.

I decide to run all of my tests again. Woo! Big honkin' error in the 
feeder code. See, it seems that RubyfulSoup defines a class called Tag 
and shoves it in the top-level space -- or, at least, tries to, before 
getting a "base class mismatch" error.

Well, I could contact the author and tell him to move his class out of 
my way, but I'm antisocial, and besides, I want it to work *now*! I 
could put my class in a module, but I WILL NOT SUCCUMB. No, no, I will 
put *his* classes in a module. And I'll do it without touching his code. 
(Look, ma, no CM issues!)

Well, being the na�ve and lazy fellow I am, I try the simplest approach:
    module Soup
       require 'rubyful_soup'
    end

*whimper* It doesn't work. I eventually settle on this can of ugly:
    module Soup
       eval IO.read('sgml_parser.rb')
       $" << 'sgml_parser.rb'
       eval IO.read('rubyful_soup.rb')
    end

Yeah. Cry. So I packaged up that can of ugly into a pretty little 
#require override, so that I never have to think about it again.

Judging by http://www.rcrchive.net/rcr/show/289, I'm not the only person 
who had the desire for this capability. Is this "library" useful to 
other people? Would it be, if I got rid of the need for a require_gem 
first? Or is this just some weird thing that only helps me? Do you have 
suggestions for making it suck less? Is it sad that my test code is 
prettier than my real code? Is there a library out there that already 
does this, but better? Will I become famous and wealthy thanks to this 
library (please oh please oh please)?

Thanks,
Devin
Yeah, I don't mean to pick on RubyfulSoup so much... 's just on the brain...