Playing with DSLs, a question or two

I am playing around with writing some DSLs to help me get more familier
with how they work and I have a couple of questions. First here’s an
example of one I am playing with (based on the classic dungeon adventure
problem)

class Adventure
def initialize
@rooms = Hash.new
@current_room = nil
end

def room(reference, &block)
if @rooms.has_key?(reference)
puts “Error: Room #{reference} has already been defined”
else
@rooms[reference] = {:short => ‘’, :long => ‘’, :exits =>
Hash.new}
end

@current_room = reference

yield block

end

def short(text)
@rooms[@current_room][:short] = text
end

def long(text)
@rooms[@current_room][:long] = text
end

def door(direction, destination, &block)
if @rooms[@current_room][:exits].has_key?(direction)
puts “Error: Room #{@current_room} already has an exit defined in
#{direction}”
else
@rooms[@current_room][:exits][direction] = {:where => destination,
:condition => block_given? ? block : true}
end
end
end

class Object
def adventure(&block)
a = Adventure.new

a.instance_eval(&block)

end
end

adventure do
room :cave do
short “You are in a large cave”
long “You are in a very large cave”
door :west, :another_cave
door :east, :exit do
if player.has_item(:key)
true
else
false
end
end
end

room :another_cave do
short “A cave”
long “Oh great … another cave”
door :east, :cave
end

room :exit do
short “Freedom”
long “Freeeeeeeeeeedom!!!”
door :west, :cave
end

require ‘pp’
pp @rooms
end

Now this works just fine but a couple of things just don’t seem right.
Notice the @current_room variable that is set in the room method and
referenced in short, long and door. This seems clunky - it is basically
a
global variable to help tie things together. Is there some better way of
doing this? Perhaps by passing it as a parameter somehow.

Also is the yield at the bottom of the room method the right way to go
or
should I be calling instance_eval or similar?

Also how do I stop, for example, the door method being called outside of
the room method? I have a solution where I set @current_room to nil
after
the yield and then each method checks to see if it is set and if not it
errors. But again this seems to be quite a pain.

Hey Peter,

How does this look? DSLs · GitHub

By making the Room a separate object, the scoping might be more as you
had
hoped e.g. the door method

Regarding the yield vs. instance_eval – this is a matter of opinion. If
you wanted to be very explicit, you could yield the adventure and room
objects to the blocks given to those methods. This makes your DSL seem a
bit less magic, but maybe that’s ok.

I gave a talk on DSLs at Boulder Ruby a while back that you might find
interesting: DSLs As Teaching Tools - Speaker Deck

Ryan

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 8:18 AM, Peter H. <

Thanks Ryan.

That was just the sort of thing I was looking for.

Thanks for that.

Gulys

Thanks for that. It woud seem that picking an adventure game was the
best
choice for learning DSLs. At least I understand the domain :slight_smile:

Peter

Hi,

Dwemthy’s Array by Why can also be helpful
http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/dwemthy/

ati