Jesús Gabriel y Galán,
I was able to accomplish (at least crudely) moving code from the main
body to the class. I felt this was worth doing because I want as much
logic as possible in the class. (Is this a worthy thing??)
As you advised, I was able to create my new instance using a method that
returned an object.
Could you please take a look at how I implemented these two methods?
Account.setupaccount, Account.report
Is this how you would have structured it?
Any tips or comments greatly appreciated.
Steve.
#!/usr/bin/ruby
class Account
attr_reader :nbr, :name, :coa
def initialize(nbr,name,coa)
@nbr=nbr
@name=name
setcoa(coa)
end
def setcoa(coa)
if [“income”, “expense”, “asset”, “liability”,
“capital”].include?(coa) then
@coa=coa
else
puts “Error, defaulted to expense”
@coa=“expense”
end
end
def Account.setupaccount
#data entry routine inside class, not in main code body.
print "enter acct nbr: ";nbr=gets.chomp
print "enter name: ";name=gets.chomp
print "enter presen: ";coa=gets.chomp
return Account.new(nbr,name,coa)
end
def Account.report(acct)
#reporting code inside class, not in main body.
puts “===Account Number Listing===”
puts “Account Nbr: #{acct.nbr}”
puts “Account Name: #{acct.name}”
puts “Account CofA: #{acct.coa}”
end
end
##Start of main code body ##
newacct=Account.setupaccount
Account.report(newacct)
##End of Main code body ##
When I clear my confusion about this, I will do something like
class Ledger < Account
##code to make an array of the Account objects and add more
functionality
end
Jesús Gabriel y Galán wrote:
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 6:36 AM, Steve P. [email protected]
wrote:
PS: I realize I can instantiate newchar=Character.new(da da da) from the
body of the code but that would require the prompting code be there
also. that would defeat my purpose. I hope I have given this enough
thought before posting! 
Two considerations:
-
I tend to separate the domain objects from the code that interacts
with the outside world to gather the data to populate that domain
object (user typing, DB, etc). This way you gain flexibility, being
able to add ways of loading or creating the object without modifying
that class
-
If, in any case, you want the interaction with the user in that
class, I would use a class method that returns an instance. If you
have other ways of creating that instance you can add new methods for
each case. For example:
#!/usr/bin/ruby -w
class Character
attr_reader :chname, :chnick, :chquote
def initialize(chname,chnick)
� @chname=chname
� � @chnick=chnick
� � @chquote=String.new
end
� def addquote(quote)
� @chquote=quote if quote.length > 10
� end
� def self.from_prompted_input
� � print “Char name: � �”;chname=gets.chomp
� � print “Char Nick: � �”;chnick=gets.chomp
� � print “Char Quote: � � � � �”;chquote=gets.chomp
Character.new chname, chnick,chquote
end
end
puts Character.from_prompted_input.inspect
What you had in mind couldn’t work, because your method was an
instance method, so from the outside you still needed someone to call
Character.new(x,y,z).promptedinput.
Having class methods to instantiate objects of the class in different
ways is a pretty typical idiom, check for example the Date class in
core:
http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Date.html
The methods civil, commercial, etc are class methods that return an
instance, constructed in a different way.
Jesus.
