From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2006-02-24T00:59:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Converting a string to a class

On Feb 23, 2006, at 9:07 AM, Anthony DeRobertis wrote:

> Gregory Brown wrote:
>
>> On 2/22/06, Anthony DeRobertis <aderobertis@metrics.net> wrote:
>>> Take the following snippet:
>>
>> why do string conversion?
>>
>> You can pass constants around in ruby just fine.
>
> I'm scanning a directory for plugins and loading them. When I load a
> file called, for example, some_plugin.rb, I assume it creates a class
> Whatever::Plugins::SomePlugin, which I naturally only have as a
> string...

You can do this without using the name assumptions in Ruby, if you  
give them a class to inherit from.  Classes get notified when they  
are subclassed:

 >> class Plugin
 >>   def self.inherited( plugin_class )
 >>     (@@plugins ||= Array.new) << plugin_class
 >>   end
 >>   def self.loaded
 >>     @@plugins || Array.new
 >>   end
 >> end
=> nil
 >> class FirstPlugin < Plugin; end
=> nil
 >> class SecondPlugin < Plugin; end
=> nil
 >> Plugin.loaded
=> [FirstPlugin, SecondPlugin]

Hope that gives you some fresh ideas.

James Edward Gray II