From: gwtmp01@...
Date: 2006-01-09T13:32:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Ideas on "Why Living Dangerous can be A Good Thing" in Ruby?


On Jan 8, 2006, at 10:30 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> Are you saying that when Model.find_by_city is executed, the model  
> looks at
> the database, discovers there's a city column, and on the fly  
> constructs a
> method to search the table by city?

I think Hal already answered this, but yes.  If your class defines
the instance method 'method_missing' then Ruby will call it when it  
can't
find a method definition.  It would look something like this (not  
tested):

class Model

   def method_missing(method_name, *args)
     if method_name.to_s =~ /^find_by_(.*)/
       # respond to find_by call
     else
       super   # results in standard method not found exception
     end
   end

end

(Note that the first argument to method_missing is an instance of  
Symbol, not
String so you need to call to_s on it in order to compare it to the
regular expression.  What is the difference between a Symbol and String
you ask?  Um, read the archives.)

This feature of Ruby's method dispatch protocol allows a class to
implement methods on demand.  It can even install a definition for
the missed method so that the *next* time it will be called directly
instead of being intercepted by method_missing.

Very handy.


Gary Wright