Ryan F. wrote in post #968910: > First thank you for your quick response. This forum seems like a place > I will be able to learn some proper rails coding. > >> NO! NO! NO! NEVER USE GLOBAL VARIABLES FOR THIS SORT OF THING! > > I have never programmed in ruby and have inherited this application to > only make a few small changes. Unfortunately the original programmer > used 50+ global variables and I really do not want to rewrite > everything.
You may not have to, but it's usually a good idea to improve the parts you're working on. If the original programming is this bad, I assume there is little or no test coverage? If that's the case, then I advise getting familiar with RSpec and Cucumber, and writing tests for anything you have to change (so you know you're not breaking things). Then do all new development test-first. > >> OK, now that I've got your attention :) , please explain what you're >> trying to do with $gItems. There will be a more appropriate place to >> put it than in a global variable; we just have to figure out what it is. > > this app has a parameter file where the number of items can be changed. > Depending on the integer that is placed in the parameter file, the view > must create a table element with the appropriate number of columns > ($gItems). $gItems is created in ApplicationController class the first > time someone navigates to the Auctioneer view from the > auctioneer_controller class index method. This allows each subsequent > client screen to draw a table showing the appropriate number of items. That's dreadful -- and easy to fix. Read it from the config file as before, but assign it to a class constant or something. See http://railscasts.com/episodes/85-yaml-configuration-file for some ideas. > I feel like my explanation is very convoluted, as is the code. let me > know if i should break it down further. I *think* I understand... > > One thing to note might be that this app is not database backed. Then why is it using Rails in the first place, I wonder? > This > is probably why the original programmer constantly used globals. Perhaps. The fact that the original programmer also used Hungarian Notation and CamelCase suggests that he wasn't too familiar with Ruby idioms at all... > >> Note, however, that Haml is generally a superior alternative to ERb, and >> in this case it provides an easier way to do this with its %tag[object] >> syntax. > > thanks, I like the look of Haml and will look into it further. Best, -- Marnen Laibow-Koser http://www.marnen.org [email protected] -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
