Ruby Italian Style

Today I was writing a library to access some API, in the design process I started wondering if in Ruby is possible to use some sort of namespacing on class.

All that I wanted was concatenating methods, like you do on active record objects. I show you the solution that I found:

module Test
  module Foo

    def bar
      @namespace = "bar"
      self
    end

    def bar_quack
      puts "Quack!"
    end
  end
end

module Test
  class Base

    def initialize
      puts "Init!"
    end

    def method_missing(method, *args)
      if @namespace
        self.send("#{@namespace}_#{method}", *args)
      else
        super
      end
    end

    include Test::Foo

  end
end

In this way you can do this:

test = Test::Base.new
#=> Init!
test.bar
#=>
test.bar_quack
#=> Quack!
test.bar.quack
#=> Quack!

The code works by implementing a method missing in the Base class, and a namespace method in the module that you want namespaced. All the method in the module must have the format: namespace_method.
Now when you call the namespace method an instance variable is set with the namespace, and self is returned. Because the method cannot be found method missing is triggered, and is the instance variable is set we send the method with the namestace.

This is a quick way that I foud to achive a prettier way to access mehods. Bye!