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Discussion on: A trick with Ruby array literals

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thepeoplesbourgeois profile image
Josh • • Edited

Good information and well-written! At one of my companies, I picked up the pattern of making a class for constants within their namespace, and referring to the array of them as ALL. Example:

class BikeShed
  module Colors
    ALL = [
      RED = 'red',
      BLUE = 'blue',
      # ...
    ]
  end

  # ...
end

This was especially helpful as more and more categories of constants became part of the codebase

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philnash profile image
Phil Nash •

There's some good enum style tricks on this page! Thanks to both of you for sharing.

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nflamel profile image
Fran C. •

Thanks to you for reading!

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nflamel profile image
Fran C. •

Never thought about using a separate module to keep them grouped but it is a really good technique.

I topically use this in a way in which the constants end up being almost private.
I either wrap the value checks in small predicate methods:

def red?
  color == COLORS_RED
end

Or if I need them with active record I create scopes like the ones in the post.

Even in tests I try to avoid using them for setup and if I have factory_bot at hand I create traits for the different values instead.

This way you end up with code which is a bit more decoupled from this specific implementation detail and when your constant is not enough and you need to build an object instead you'll save a lot of grepping and sedding😅