From: Alex Young <alex@...>
Date: 2006-07-24T21:44:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Autoloading objects — Ruby equivalent for PHP5 "__autoload

Marcin Mielżyński wrote:
> Naum T. wrote:
> 
>> Does there exist a Ruby equivalent to PHP5 "magic" __autoload method 
>> that spares the developer from detailing a list of "require" statements?
>> http://us2.php.net/autoload
>>
>> Or is this something that a homebrewed solution is necessary? Like 
>> catching the exception and testing for file existence, etc.… or is 
>> there a gem/extension featuring this functionality?
>>
> 
> Sure there is ;D
> 
> Kernel#autoload:
> http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Kernel.html#M002963
> 
> and:
> 
> Module#autoload:
> http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Module.html#M001061
That's not quite it.  You need to call Module.autoload yourself.  PHP's 
autoload is called by the interpreter to perform the inclusion.  You 
could use const_missing to get a similar functionality, though...

def Object.const_missing(name)
   load name.to_lower + ".rb"
end

That's got a few rough edges, though, to put it mildly...

-- 
Alex