On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 7:17 AM, Fernando Perez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The biggest problems I have when developing (beside stupid typos) are: > 1) The name of a method which I often change to a supposedly more > descriptive name, which I will eventually change to an even more > supposedly descriptive name > 2) The arguments a method takes > > Let's say I have a class method: Product.find_if_purchased(product_id, > user_id) > > Let's say it is called in 3 different controllers. > > Now I want to change the name of the method to make it more clear and at > the same time I will throw a new argument to it: > Product.find_if_purchased_by_user_id(product_id, user_id, site_id) > > Now this means I have to change the code in three controllers, and also > change the specs that test it with should_receive(:find_if_purchased). > This is painful. > > And it demonstrates that controllers are tightly coupled to models which > shouldn't be the case. Therefore we need names that don't vary over > time. We want our models and controllers to work in a black box manner. > > So based on the design pattern "convention over configuration", why not > use methods such as: > > Product.find_for_products_index or ..._show, that are named after their > controller and action where they are called? > > Moreover, instead of hardcoding the arguments that it requires, why not > pass a hash of arguments which is much more flexible? Indeed, when using > hardcoded arguments, if let's say I want to define a default value for > product_id, then again I must change all code that calls it, because in > Ruby, arguments that have default values must be defined last. > > What do you think about my idea? I have been trying it recently, and I > find it more pleasant to work with. It also prevents me from putting too > much code inside the controllers. > > They are drawbacks though: > 1) the name of the method is not descriptive, a little comment in the > controller helps well here. > 2) when the method is reused by many actions, we need to create "dummy" > methods that simply call the real method. For instance, > find_for_products_show just passes the arguments to another method > called find_for_subscriptions_show which is where the real code sits > 3) there is a slight performance hit
4) as the names become more similar they become harder to find :) For me, I think having descriptive names that are easy to find makes it much easier to change the things I want to change. Just search and replace. FWIW, David > > Has anyone experienced such thing? The idea came to me yesterday when > trying to spec a chain of named_methods. I realized that the chain of > named_methods doesn't belong to the controller, it should be wrapped in > a dummy method that calls the named_scopes. > > > Best regards, > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > _______________________________________________ > rspec-users mailing list > rspec-users@rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users > _______________________________________________ rspec-users mailing list rspec-users@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
