From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2004-03-01T14:02:46+09:00
Subject: Re: turn hash into object variables?

> I know beautiful Ruby has an easier way to do this:
>
> class SomeClass
> 	def initialize(someHash)
> 		@name = someHash['name']
> 		@address = someHash['address']
> 		@blah = someHash['blah']
> 		# etc for many key=>value pairs ...
> 	end
> end

Hash#values_at(k1, k2, ...)

> How can I make it do that for every key in the hash?

Using OpenStruct gets you halfway there.

  require 'ostruct'
  h = { :name => "John", :age => 42 }
  o = OpenStruct.new(h)
  o.name                  # -> "John"
  o.age                   # -> 42

If you want to apply it to arbitrary classes, I suggest you write a module
that implements the "from_hash" method.

  class SomeClass
    extend FromHash
    def initialize
    end
  end

  sc = SomeClass.from_hash(h)   # 'h' as above
  sc.name                       # -> "John"

Cheers,
Gavin