Idiomatic way to pass multiple Procs/lambdas/blocks

Ruby
#1

I am working on a little syntactical sugar library for 0mq (networking
library). One of the things I would like to provide is a set of
asynchronous send/recv methods for transmitting and receiving messages.
The method signature would look something like this:

def send message, timeout = -1, callback, errback
end

where…

+timeout+ is the number of seconds to wait before triggering the
+errback+ Proc; -1 disables timeouts

+callback+ is the Proc/method/lambda executed upon acknowledged
completion

+errback+ is the Proc/method/lambda executed upon timeout

Ruby doesn’t allow for passing multiple blocks to a method so I’m faced
with passing Procs or methods.

Is there a more idiomatic way to accomplish my intentions?

cr

#2

I like using symbols that identify named methods, personally

#3

On Thursday, May 13, 2010 11:03:37 am Chuck R. wrote:

Ruby doesn’t allow for passing multiple blocks to a method so I’m faced
with passing Procs or methods.

Is there a more idiomatic way to accomplish my intentions?

Not really. In JavaScript, it’d look like this:

send({
callback: function() { … },
errback: function() { … },
…
});

I’d suggest that route, actually, if you’re going to have it just be a
single
method:

1.9-only syntax

send message, timeout: 123, callback: ->{…}, errback: ->{…}

1.8 syntax

send message, :timeout => 123, :callback => lambda{…}, :errback =>
lambda{…}

I’d also suggest a convenience class built around it, so I can instead
do:

class Foo
include YourModule

def callback
…
end
def errback
…
end
end

Construct a new Foo and send a message with it

Foo.send(some_message)