# Program design - template design pattern

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/program-design-template-design-pattern/163928>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 26, 2009, 7:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/program-design-template-design-pattern/163928 "2009-03-26T07:25:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/scudco)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 7:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/program-design-template-design-pattern/163928/1 "2009-03-26T07:25:05Z")

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although im making a rails app this is more specific to ruby and general  
coding.

I want to access several preknown rss feeds, parse and extract the  
relevant data and store it into an array. The feeds all have similiar  
content but the structure differs. That means my extracting regexps etc  
will differ for each feed.

I want to do something like this

items = []  
feeds.each do |feed|  
clean\_up(feed) #squeeze and strip stuff etc  
item = parse(feed)  
items \<\< item  
end  
return items

where the code in parse() will vary depedning on the feed.

i know of the template design patter and can implement it but how will i  
select the correct parse method for a given feed?

will i have to have a case control structure in the block which will  
determine which feed is currently being processed and then apply the  
correct parse method? If i had 50 feeds that could be one huge case  
structure… is there a more elegant way?

any tips would be greatly appreciated.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/scudco)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 11:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/program-design-template-design-pattern/163928/2 "2009-03-26T11:29:33Z")

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While a lot depends on several other aspects of your project, this  
specific  
problem depends on a principle question:

Do you have any control over the feed object?

If you have any control, then you could make a polymorphic superclass  
called  
Feed and go on from there where each separate feed has its own related  
methods to deal with its idiosyncrasies and polymorphic methods that  
deal  
with common tasks. For ex:

class Feed  
def initialize  
end  
def parse\_content  
end  
end

class BbcFeed \< Feed  
def parse\_content  
# do something relevant here  
# probably return a string/hash/or content object  
end

# define other methods specific to BbcFeed etc

end

Once this is done, you just have to create the right object at runtime,  
perhaps have a factory object detailing this.

If you don’t have control, there isn’t a way to run away from doing  
checks  
on the object. Depending on how you determine the regex to use, you  
could  
have specific solutions. Perhaps each feed has a different URL that you  
could use to determine the parsing, or perhaps something else in the  
xml…either way, you have to know what object you are dealing with, or  
you  
have to write a parser that deals with it.

From your pseudo code, it would seem that you are still not thinking in  
terms of object oriented code. For ex:

clean\_up(feed)  
parse(feed)

If you have to do it using OO, you probably want to assign those  
behaviors  
to specific objects. But don’t listen to me, I am not very good at this.

Hope this helps.

Jayanth

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/scudco)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 11:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/program-design-template-design-pattern/163928/3 "2009-03-26T11:57:44Z")

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2009/3/26 Srijayanth S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid):

> While a lot depends on several other aspects of your project, this specific  
> problem depends on a principle question:
> 
> Do you have any control over the feed object?

I second that. Also, what type is “feed”? That’s not clear to me.

> If you have any control, then you could make a polymorphic superclass called  
> Feed and go on from there where each separate feed has its own related  
> methods to deal with its idiosyncrasies and polymorphic methods that deal  
> with common tasks. For ex:
> 
> class Feed  
> def initialize  
> end  
> def parse\_content  
> end

One could also add

# download the feed

def fetch(uri)  
…  
end

> Once this is done, you just have to create the right object at runtime,  
> perhaps have a factory object detailing this.

Or stuff the relationship between feed URI’s and class that deals with  
it in a Hash:

FEEDS = {  
‘[http://foo.bar/feed.rdf](http://foo.bar/feed.rdf)’ =\> BbcFeed,  
‘[http://baz.boz.buz/path.rdf](http://baz.boz.buz/path.rdf)’ =\> BbcFeed,  
‘[http://what.ever.you/like](http://what.ever.you/like)’ =\> OtherFeed,  
}.freeze

Then you can do

FEEDS.each |uri, cl|  
feed\_handler = cl.new  
feed\_handler.fetch  
feed\_handler.parse\_content  
end

> If you don’t have control, there isn’t a way to run away from doing checks  
> on the object. Depending on how you determine the regex to use, you could  
> have specific solutions. Perhaps each feed has a different URL that you  
> could use to determine the parsing, or perhaps something else in the  
> xml…either way, you have to know what object you are dealing with, or you  
> have to write a parser that deals with it.

Feed type checks could be done on the URI or the content. Depending  
on that a different approach needs to be followed but the basic  
pattern stays the same.

Kind regards

robert

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/scudco)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 12:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/program-design-template-design-pattern/163928/4 "2009-03-26T12:31:44Z")

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On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 4:23 PM, Robert K.  
[removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)wrote:

> called  
> One could also add
> 
> > ```
> > # do something relevant here
> > 
> > ```
> 
> feed\_handler.fetch
> 
> > have to write a parser that deals with it.
> 
> Feed type checks could be done on the URI or the content. Depending  
> on that a different approach needs to be followed but the basic  
> pattern stays the same.

Yeah I thought of that too, but God knows what his criterion for  
choosing  
the parser are. It might be more complex than just a simple uri mapping.

Jayanth

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/scudco)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 1:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/program-design-template-design-pattern/163928/5 "2009-03-27T01:35:12Z")

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Hi all,

thanks for you comments. Yes Im referring to rss feeds and i am in full  
controll of how they are represented. Im choosing the feed addresses,  
fetching them and parsing them.

I actually got confused between my patterns, it was the strategy pattern  
not the template pattern. But at the end of the day it all boiled down  
to how I could dynamically initialize each feed\_parser and thats where i  
got stuck mainly due to lack of programming experience.

I didnt know I could store class names in hashes but after reading up on  
Ruby Desing Patterns i found out they are objects themselves.

So Ill think ill use the hash idea!

Thank you all so much for your suggestions.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/scudco)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 8:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/program-design-template-design-pattern/163928/6 "2009-03-27T08:58:55Z")

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2009/3/27 Adam A. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid):

> I actually got confused between my patterns, it was the strategy pattern  
> not the template pattern. But at the end of the day it all boiled down  
> to how I could dynamically initialize each feed\_parser and thats where i  
> got stuck mainly due to lack of programming experience.
> 
> I didnt know I could store class names in hashes but after reading up on

Actually those were not class names but class _objects_ themselves in  
my example!

> Ruby Desing Patterns i found out they are objects themselves.
> 
> So Ill think ill use the hash idea!

So I conclude from that that you know which feed needs which parsing  
algorithm.

> Thank you all so much for your suggestions.

You’re welcome!

Kind regards

robert