djberg96 (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} djberg96) wrote,@ 2006-03-27 07:46:00 |
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| Current mood: | geeky |
| Entry tags: | ruby |
Keep your classes subclassable!
Evan Phoenix submitted a patch to ruby-core recently that caused me have one of those "duh!" moments, accompanied by a smack to the forehead. What am I talking about? I'm talking about not hard coding your class names, thus making your classes difficult or impossible to subclass.
Consider this example:
class Foo
def create_new
Foo.new
end
end
Zip it and ship it, right? Except, a short time later, someone uses your code and decides they want to subclass Foo:
class Bar < Foo end Bar.new.create_new # Oops!
See the problem? They're going to get back a Foo class instead of a Bar class because you hard coded the class name in the method.
The solution is to keep your classes dynamic:
class Foo
def create_new
self.class.new
end
end
Bingo, baby.
