What's the deal with class << self

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

I’m going through the source code of RAM(Ruby asset manager) http://www.locusfoc.us/ram.

I’m looking at the source code of a model Article.rb.

It has bunch of instance methods and then this.

class << self
def search(query, groups, order = nil) groups = [groups].flatten find(:all, :select => “articles.*”, :joins => “INNER JOIN linkings ON articles.id = linkings.linkable_id”, :conditions => [“linkings.group_id IN (#{groups.join(‘,’)}) AND (linkings.linkable_type=‘Article’) AND (articles.title LIKE ? OR articles.body LIKE ? OR (SELECT tags.name FROM tags INNER JOIN taggings ON tags.id = taggings.tag_id WHERE taggings.taggable_id = articles.id AND taggings.taggable_type = ‘Article’ AND tags.name LIKE ?) IS NOT NULL)”, “%#{query}%”, “%#{query}%”, “%#{query}%”], :group => " articles.id", :order => order) end end

My question is why go all the way and do class << stuff to get a class method. What’s wrong with using just def self. search(query, groups, order = nil)

… end

What are the design benefits. I have read ruby book and can understand in some cases it’s useful. But in this case when we have a simple model why not just have self.method_name.

Thanks.

2

Hi,

This should be helpful:

and

- Rob

3

Hi --

Hi,

I'm going through the source code of RAM(Ruby asset manager) http://www.locusfoc.us/ram.

I'm looking at the source code of a model Article.rb.

It has bunch of instance methods and then this.

  class << self     def search(query, groups, order = nil)       groups = [groups].flatten       find(:all, :select => "articles.*", :joins => "INNER JOIN linkings ON articles.id = linkings.linkable_id", :conditions => ["linkings.group_id IN (#{groups.join(',')}) AND (linkings.linkable_type='Article') AND (articles.title LIKE ? OR articles.body LIKE ? OR (SELECT tags.name FROM tags INNER JOIN taggings ON tags.id = taggings.tag_id WHERE taggings.taggable_id = articles.id AND taggings.taggable_type = 'Article' AND tags.name LIKE ?) IS NOT NULL)", "%#{query}%", "%#{query}%", "%#{query}%"], :group => " articles.id", :order => order)     end   end

My question is why go all the way and do class << stuff to get a class method. What's wrong with using just def self. search(query, groups, order = nil)    ..... end

What are the design benefits. I have read ruby book and can understand in some cases it's useful. But in this case when we have a simple model why not just have self.method_name.

Thanks.

Hi,

This should be helpful:

Ola Bini: Programming Language Synchronicity: The Ruby singleton class and Ola Bini: Programming Language Synchronicity: Ruby Metaprogramming techniques

I'll throw my hat in the ring :slight_smile:

   http://www.rubypal.com/singletons.html

(an essay from last year that just got resuscitated today amidst some singleton-class discussion on IRC)

Mind you, Neeraj was mainly asking about the relative merits of the two techniques, rather than the underlying stuff. To which I would say: the class << obj technique is probably chosen mostly because it sort of "normalizes" the appearance of the code, so that every method definition is based on a bareword. On the other hand, the other way gives you an explicit visual reminder, with each method, that the method is being added to an object on a singleton basis.

David