I don’t like magic because I don’t understand how it works. After I understand it, it’s no longer magic, but I usually have a much greater appreciation for the execution.
I’ve been using Ruby without understanding the language’s nuts and bolts for a while. So I picked up O’Reilly’s The Ruby Programming Language and am making my way through it. Along the way I will document some of the useful and interesting pieces that I enjoy…
A ‘fluent API’ allows coders to conveniently chain many statements together which act on an object (or a series of objects there derived) in a logically progressive manner.
indy500_winner = Race.new('Indianapolis').start.run_laps(500).winner
While elegant, these chains can get very long. Ruby 1.9 has altered its statement terminator rules to allow continuations on successive lines. When the first non-whitespace character on a line is a period, it is considered a continuation.
indy500_winner = Race.new('Indianapolis')
.start
.run_laps(250)
.yellow_flag(10)
.run_laps(240)
.winner
Nice, eh?
