Ruby String to Class Name

Question

I am trying to create a new class to that will inherit from ActiveRecord::Base the class needs to be dynamically generated from a string

\"gener         


        

Answer 1

If your string contains a namespace, you can use:

require 'rubygems'
require 'active_support/inflector'
parent=String # using String to get a self contained example
# require 'active_record'   # uncomment for ActiveRecord::Base as parent class
# parent=ActiveRecord::Base # uncomment for ActiveRecord::Base as parent class
namespace = 'A::B::general_systems'.split('::') 
class_name = namespace.pop 
namespace = namespace.inject(Object) do |mod, name|
  if mod.constants.collect{|sym| sym.to_s}.include? name.classify
    mod.const_get name.classify
  else
    mod.const_set name.classify, Module.new
  end
end

klass = if namespace.constants.include? class_name.classify
  namespace.const_get class_name.classify
else
  namespace.const_set class_name.classify, Class.new(parent)
end

object = klass.allocate # allocate new object of klass
object.send :initialize # initialize object
object.class
object.class.superclass

Answer 2

Look at this example from "The Book Of Ruby", included in the Ruby 1.9 installer.

puts("What shall we call this class?> ")
className = gets.strip().capitalize()
Object.const_set(className,Class.new)
puts("I'll give it a method called > 'myname'" ) 
className = Object.const_get(className)
className::module_eval{
  define_method(:myname){ 
    puts("The name of my class is '#{self.class}'" ) 
 } }
 x = className.new x.myname

Answer 3

Given:

class Banana
end

You can fetch the class in plain Ruby with:

Object.const_get 'Banana'
=> Banana

or if you're using Rails:

'Banana'.constantize
=> Banana

Answer 4

try

>> "general_systems".classify
=> "GeneralSystem"

Answer 5

klazz = Class.new(ActiveRecord::Base) do
  def do_something_fun(param1)
    param1.have_fun!
  end
end

klazz_name = "general_systems".singularize.classify
Object.const_set(klazz_name, klazz)

Answer 6

If you're using Rails, it provides a method called #constantize that will work:

irb(main):017:0> Object.const_get 'House::Owns'
NameError: wrong constant name House::Owns

'House::Owns'.constantize
=> House::Owns