From: Jan Svitok <jan.svitok@...>
Date: 2007-02-22T19:42:56+09:00
Subject: Re: passing optional argument to win32 ole subsystem

On 2/22/07, Manish Sapariya <manishs@reconnex.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I am trying to embed a html document in Excel document using Win32OLE.
> The VBA Excel reference talks about this by using the OleObject Add method.
> However I am not sure how do I pass the optional argument in ruby which OLE
> will understand. Following is the snippet of the sample from VBA refernce.
>
> ==============
> |Set myDocument = Worksheets(1)
> myDocument.Shapes.*AddOLEObject* Left:=100, Top:=100, _ Width:=200,
> Height:=300, _ FileName:="c:\my documents\testing.doc", link:=True|
> ==============
>
>
> I tried passing null, but it failed miserably. I am not sure if I pass
> some argument incorrectly
> or the method I am using to pass the arguments is incorrect.
> Can somebody let me know the exact syntax in ruby to make this call
> successful.
> Any relevant pointers will be appreciated.
>
> Thanks and Regards,
> Manish

http://ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/html/win32.html#UB

Named Arguments

Other automation client languages such as Visual Basic have the
concept of named arguments. Suppose you had a Visual Basic routine
with the signature:

Song(artist, title, length):    rem Visual Basic

Instead of calling it with all three arguments in the order specified,
you could use named arguments.

Song title := 'Get It On':      rem Visual Basic

This is equivalent to the call Song(nil, 'Get It On', nil).

In Ruby, you can use this feature by passing a hash with the named arguments.

Song.new( 'title' => 'Get It On' )

----------

So basically you just name those arguments you actually need:

myDocument.Shapes.AddOLEObject( 'Left' => 100, 'Top' => 100, 'Width' => 200,
'Height' => 300, 'FileName' => "c:\\my documents\\testing.doc", 'link' => true)