Hash as arguments of a method call

Rails
1

Hi all,

I’m writing a new class, and in the initialize I have:
class Statement
def initialize(*args)
@args = args[0]
@args[:start_at] = 30.days.ago if @args[:start_at].nil?
@args[:finish_at] = Date.today if @args[:finish_at].nil?
@customer = Customer.find(@args[:customer_id])
end

(…)

end

This allows me, as you can see, to use @args[:customer_id] for example
to read arguments passed to the initialize. This is helpful in case I
need to add some more arguments to my method without breaking existing
calls.

This code is currently working (did not test it very long).

My question is: Why do I have to do the @args = args[0] thingy? I
mean, I noticed that args was an Array instead of a hash, so thats why
I did it. Is this correct? It doesnt look good…

Thanks!

2

what you define here is a variable length argument list
you get all argument passed as an array, not a hash

you could call it like:
initialize({:a=>1,:b=>2},{:a=>3,:b=>4})
and get an array with two hashes

to pass a single hash, you can use a simple parameter
def initialize(args_hash)
call it with the hash
initialize({:start_at => 'whatever, :finish_at => ‘now’})
or
initialize(:start_at => 'whatever, :finish_at => ‘now’)
since you can omit the curly braces for the last or only
hash argument