From: Sebastian Hungerecker <sepp2k@...>
Date: 2007-12-13T06:26:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Turning symbols into class names

Samantha wrote:
> Now, I need to do the same thing for those symbols... however, I need
> to somehow get Ruby to recognize those symbols as Classes.

Nitpick: You need ruby to give you the class with a certain name. You don't 
need ruby to "recognize" the symbols as something they're not.


> So, let's say in my array, I have a symbol by the name of :foos, that /
> should/ correspond with the Foo class.
>
> So...
>
> array looks like: [:foos, :bars]
>
> I need to be able to do something along the lines of:
>
> array[0].to_s.capitalize.singularize.my_method_to_grab_associations
>
> Well, obviously that will give me Foo, but it thinks Foo is a string.

You make it sound as if ruby was wrong in thinking so. "Foo" *is* a string.


> Which leads me to my question -
> How do I get my method to give me back what I'm looking for on Foo,
> rather than complaining that Foo is a string?

By passing the string to const_get, which will return the value of the 
constant with the name "Foo" and then calling your methods on that value 
(which will be the class object if Foo is a class).
[:foos, :bars].map {|name| Object.const_get(name.to_s.capitalize.singularize)}
should return [Foo, Bar], Foo and Bar being class objects.


HTH,
Sebastian
-- 
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