From: Kyle Schmitt <kyleaschmitt@...>
Date: 2007-07-27T04:30:25+09:00
Subject: Class variables and how to set them up only once.

I'm trying to share a File object with everything that inherits from
Superclass, for logging.

I'm trying to come up with a nice clean way of handling this, and this isn't it:
Right now it's doing a begin/rescue/end to see if the @@logger.nil?
(which throws an error if it doesn't exist), and setup @@logger in the
rescue.

The other thought I had was to take the setupLogger out of initialize,
have a single dummy instance of SuperPage, and call setupLogger from
that class once.  That seems even worse.

I'm sure other people can think of more elegant ways of handling this,
and I'd sure like to hear their suggestions :)

I tried putzing around with class_variables, but I couldn't seem to
get at those from within a class.


--Kyle

class SuperPage
    def initialize()
    #lots of stuff
    setupLogger()#setsup an @@logger member that the log methods use
    ObjectSpace.define_finalizer(self, SuperPage.create_finalizer(@@logger))
  end

  def logError(message)
    log(:Error,message)
    throw :assertion_error
  end

  def log(type,message)
    @@logger.puts("#{...ugly long string that includes the message...}")
  end

  def setupLogger(path="c:\\#{DateTime.now.to_s.gsub(':','-')}.xml")
    begin
      @@logger.nil?
    rescue
      puts "I'm setting up the logger, you should only see me once"
      @@logger=File.new("c:\\#{DateTime.now.to_s.gsub(':','-')}.xml","w")
      @@logger.puts "<log>"
      @loggerSetup=true
    end
  end
end