What if a column is named "class"? I'd rather prefer something like that:
Post.where { |post| post[:title].like('zomg%') | post[:class].like('bbq%') }
There is a recent (scattered) discussion about this topic on ruby-core mailing list:
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/4085#note-249
As noticed in that scattered thread, the odd-named columns (such as
“dotted.column”) aren’t my only concern with Squeel approach (when the block has zero arity) as there may be conflicts with local methods and variables/arguments names.
And I don't see much difference (as you state it is less readable)
between:
post[:title].like('zomg%')
and
post.title.like('zomg%')
But I find this more consisent:
post[:"dotted.column"].like('zomg%')
than this:
post.__send__(:"dotted.column").like('zomg%')
You could actually support both syntaxes, but if you do so you
wouldn’t be able to support things like this in the future:
post.like(:some_column, 'some value')
as an alternative to
post[:some_column].like('some value')
Not that I think that would be wanted at some point but maybe we
could find some useful methods to define on the dsl object in the future.
With regards to GitHub stars, I wouldn't count much on that. I use
GH stars as a global “favorites” thing so that I can quickly find some project I want to cite or take a closer look in the future. Most GH projects I starred I don’t actually use.
But I find this more consisent: post[:"dotted.column"].like('zomg%') than this: post.__send__(:"dotted.column").like('zomg%') You could actually support both syntaxes, but if you do so youwouldn’t be able to support things like this in the future:
I guess I don’t follow, here – do you mean a column with an actual dot in its name? I’ve been working with SQL for over 15 years, and while I know it’s possible to do, I’ve never encountered a good reason for it. I agree that the first is more consistent in this case, but this seems like the edgiest of edge cases – and, as you said, could be supported with alternative syntax. Not worried about supporting “like(:column, value)”, personally. I like left to right readability when possible.
With regards to GitHub stars, I wouldn't count much on that. I useGH stars as a global “favorites” thing so that I can quickly find some project I want to cite or take a closer look in the future. Most GH projects I starred I don’t actually use.
Didn’t mean to imply much importance for stars, but as a relative metric, it seemed moderately useful – they are as important/unimportant everywhere. 