From: Dmitry Borodaenko <d.borodaenko@...>
Date: 2003-08-08T21:08:50+09:00
Subject: Can't inherit CGI from cgi.rb

I thought it would be trivial to derive a class from CGI and add some
instance variables to it, however:

require 'cgi'
class SamizdatCGI < CGI
    def initialize
        super
	@session = Session.new(self)
    end
    attr_reader :session
end
cgi = SamizdatCGI.new

As soon as I pass some parameters into such script, I get the following
error:

/usr/lib/ruby/1.6/cgi.rb:1595:in `class_eval': (eval):1:in
`remove_const': constant SamizdatCGI::CGI_PARAMS not defined (NameError)
        from /usr/lib/ruby/1.6/cgi.rb:1595:in `class_eval'
        from /usr/lib/ruby/1.6/cgi.rb:1595:in `initialize'
        from /usr/lib/ruby/1.6/cgi.rb:1593

Offending code in cgi.rb is (it is the same in cgi.rb from Ruby 1.8):

initialize_query()  # set @params, @cookies
eval "CGI_PARAMS  = @params.nil?  ? nil : @params.dup"
eval "CGI_COOKIES = @cookies.nil? ? nil : @cookies.dup"
if defined?(MOD_RUBY) and (RUBY_VERSION < "1.4.3")
  raise "Please, use ruby1.4.3 or later."
else
  at_exit() do
    if defined?(CGI_PARAMS)
      self.class.class_eval("remove_const(:CGI_PARAMS)")
                 ^
      self.class.class_eval("remove_const(:CGI_COOKIES)")
    end
  end
end

Is it a bug in cgi.rb, or in Ruby? If it's intended to not to allow to
inherit from CGI, is there some other elegant way to generate custom
instance variables from CGI.new ?

-- 
Dmitry Borodaenko