Rails Plugins: Why to register your own functionality with s

Rails
1

Hi there,

I have seen in the file column plugin (
http://www.kanthak.net/opensource/file_column/) from Sebastian K.
or
David’s acts_as_taggable plugin that to register my functionality I need
to
do something like this:

ApplicationHelper.send(:include, InPlaceEditAssociations)

I am wondering why not:

(a)
module ApplicationHelper
include InPlaceEditAssociatons
end

or:

(b)
ApplicationHelper.include(InPlaceEditAssociations)

As I now know a way that works this is not crucial to me, but I am still
curious.

Cheers,
Mariano

2

Grmpfh. Sorry, forgot to mention something:
a) results in the methods from my module being available in the
ApplicationHelper directly after my definition but not when accessed
from a
view.
b) results in a error message saying that I tried to call a private
method.

3

Mariano K. wrote:

Hi there,

I have seen in the file column plugin (
http://www.kanthak.net/opensource/file_column/) from Sebastian K.
or
David’s acts_as_taggable plugin that to register my functionality I need
to
do something like this:

ApplicationHelper.send(:include, InPlaceEditAssociations)

I am wondering why not:

(a)
module ApplicationHelper
include InPlaceEditAssociatons
end

or:

(b)
ApplicationHelper.include(InPlaceEditAssociations)

As I now know a way that works this is not crucial to me, but I am still
curious.

Cheers,
Mariano

With send you can call private methods so,
ApplicationHelper.send(:include, InPlaceEditAssociations) is
ApplicationHelper.include(InPlaceEditAssociations) except it doesn’t
matter that the method is private.

joey__

4

Hey Joey,

thanks.

I am wondering what is the point of making a method private then? To
give
an indication that this method is not supposed to be called from the
outside?

Cheers,
Mariano