Catch all method... e.g perl's autoload

Hey all,

Does ruby have a catchall method similar to perl’s autoload?

Thanks in advance!
Tim

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t
matter and those who matter don’t mind.

  • Dr. Seuss

On Sep 2, 2006, at 10:02 AM, Tim McIntyre wrote:

Does ruby have a catchall method similar to perl’s autoload?

Does this sound right?

$ ri Kernel#method_missing
-------------------------------------------------- Kernel#method_missing
obj.method_missing(symbol [, *args] ) => result

  Invoked by Ruby when obj is sent a message it cannot handle.
  symbol is the symbol for the method called, and args are any
  arguments that were passed to it. By default, the interpreter
  raises an error when this method is called. However, it is
  possible to override the method to provide more dynamic behavior.
  The example below creates a class Roman, which responds to methods
  with names consisting of roman numerals, returning the
  corresponding integer values.

     class Roman
       def romanToInt(str)
         # ...
       end
       def method_missing(methId)
         str = methId.id2name
         romanToInt(str)
       end
     end

     r = Roman.new
     r.iv      #=> 4
     r.xxiii   #=> 23
     r.mm      #=> 2000


Eric H. - [email protected] - http://blog.segment7.net
This implementation is HODEL-HASH-9600 compliant

http://trackmap.robotcoop.com

Yep, thats what I was looking for. Thanks Eric!

still have some ActiveRecord idiosyncrasies holding up what I want to
do here but thats the gist.

Thanks again!
Tim

On Sep 2, 2006, at 10:15 AM, Eric H. wrote:


class Roman
r.iv #=> 4

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t
matter and those who matter don’t mind.

  • Dr. Seuss