From: harryo@... (Harry Ohlsen)
Date: 2002-04-02T09:10:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Creating an instance of a class without calling initialize()

"Rich Kilmer" <rich@infoether.com> wrote in message 

> You actually may want to recommend that he use:
> 
> obj = new
> 
> FOR EACH ATTRIBUTE
>   obj.instance_eval "@#{attributeName}=#{attributeValue}"
> END
> 
> That way it works for attributes that do not have writer methods but
> only reader methods (ie. Foo.x but not Foo.x=)

Unfortunately, that won't work very well if the attribute
value is an instance of an arbitrarily complex class, since
what it's effectively trying to do is de-serialise/re-serialise
atrributeValue as text :-).

What I did, instead, was have it generate a setter on the
fly, with a completely different name (ie, something
like "__set_x__", rather than "x="), to avoid screwing up
any setter that might exist.

The thing about that is you can do the assignment
via a send to the method, without having to convert the
value to text, which you're forced to do if you try to
do it as a single eval.

Now that I think about it, though, I should probably handle
that the same way as the new_without_init ... ie, alias
x=, call it, then re-alias it (obviously, also catching the
case where it doesn't exist and hence shouldn't after the
assignment has been achieved).