captured sparks

The need to know Ruby

As part of the development of my app, I had a need to display various different categories of to-do items – complete, overdue and “normal”.

I was using a method in the Todo class similar to the following to create these categories:

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def self.find_overdue
  overdue = Array.new
  items = find(:all)
  for item in items
    if item.overdue?
      overdue << item
    else
    end
  end
  overdue
end

I was reading through the online Ruby documentation on another issue and came across a nice method in the Hash class: reject. This acts as a “delete if” method and can substantially reduce the code above:

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def self.find_overdue
  items = find(:all)
  items.reject { |i| i.not_overdue? }
end

The “not_overdue” method is defined separately in the Todo class. I think this definitely shows the importance of knowing the Ruby language and equally demonstrates its power.