define_method with parameters

Just to be clear, you can do this:

define_method(:my_method) do |foo, bar| # or even |*args|
  # do something
end

This means same as:

def my_method(foo, bar)
  # do something
end

If you want to define method with parameters that have default values, you need to get a bit more creative and do something like this:

define_method(:my_method) do |foo, bar|
  bar ||= {}
  # do something
end

cattr_accessor_with_default

Class attribute assessors are neat if you want to set up modifiable constant-like varibles. This is how you’d normally set it up:

module MyPlugin
  class Conf
    @@awesome_level = 'huge'
    cattr_accessor :awesome_level
  end
end

Then you can call and modify it like this:

>> MyPlugin::Conf.awesome_level
=> 'huge'
>> MyPlugin::Conf.awesome_level = 'massive'
>> MyPlugin::Conf.awesome_level
=> 'massive'

If you have a pile of those accessors I’d do something like this (there might be a better way, but it works):

module MyPlugin
  class Conf
    def self.cattr_accessor_with_default(name, value = nil)
      cattr_accessor name
      self.send("#{name}=", value) if value
    end

    cattr_accessor_with_default :awesome_level, 'huge'
    cattr_accessor_with_default :speed_level, 'insane'
    cattr_accessor_with_default :indifferent_level
    cattr_accessor_with_default :craziness_level, 'nuts'
  end
end

This way you declare accessor and it’s optional default value on the same line

Handy shorthand for array manipulation

You may write something like this:

>> ['a', 'b', 'c'].collect{|letter| letter.capitalize}
=> ["A", "B", "C"]

But it looks so much nicer this way:

>> ['a', 'b', 'c'].collect(&:capitalize)
=> ["A", "B", "C"]

HTML entities in options

Unfortunately everything is escaped with ERB::Util#html_escape. Your only option is either manually construct options or compeletely overwrite this method.

Array clustering

Sometimes you don’t want to mangle sequence of an array and just want to group adjacent values. Here’s a nice method to do so (drop it in your initializers directory or something):

module Enumerable
  # clumps adjacent elements together
  # >> [2,2,2,3,3,4,2,2,1].cluster{|x| x}
  # => [[2, 2, 2], [3, 3], [4], [2, 2], [1]]
  def cluster
    cluster = []
    each do |element|
      if cluster.last && yield(cluster.last.last) == yield(element)
        cluster.last << element
      else
        cluster << [element]
      end
    end
    cluster
  end
end

Similarly you can do the clustering on more complex items. For instance you want to cluster Documents on creation date and their type:

Document.all.cluster{|document| [document.created_on, document.type]}

Take care when writing regex

When you want to validate a field for a continuous string you’d probably write something like this (if it’s really early in the morning and you didn’t have your coffee yet):

validates_format_of :something => /\w/

At the first sight it looks like it’s working because something = “blahblahblah” is valid. However, so is this: something = “blah meh 55”. It’s just that your regex matched a substring of the value and not the whole thing. The proper regex you’re looking for is actually:

validates_format_of :something => /^\w$/

String#match will match single token only

>> s = “{{person}} ate {{thing}}”

> “{{person}} ate {{thing}}”

>> r = /{{(.*?)}}/

> {{}}

>> s.match®.captures

> [“person”]

Using String#scan pulls out all tokens you were searching for:

>> s.scan®.flatten

> [“person”, “thing”]

For those who is looking for lost country_select

country_select lives on as a plugin that can be acquired from here: http://github.com/rails/country_select/tree/master