Shorthand

Shorthand gives you an easy way to add a object-focused DSL (an OSL, if you will) useful for configuring instances -- without dirtying up your class implementation. This of it as running your DSL in a little sandbox.

For example, let's say we have a class, Person:

class Person
  # with a lot of accessors
end

And we'd like an API like:

Person.new do
  name 'Bruce Williams'
  location 'Portland, OR'
end

Provided we had name= and location= attribute writers defined on Person, this would be as easy as:

class Person
  include Shorthand # this line
end

If you prefer yield-style semantics, rest assured this API would work as well:

Person.new do |person|
  person.name 'Bruce Williams'
  person.location 'Portland, OR'
end

You can also use the shorthand method after initialization:

person = Person.new('Bruce', 'Williams')
person.shorthand do
  location 'Portland, OR'
  zipcode '97209'
end

Want to one use one or the other? You can include the ala-carte modules Shorthand::Init or Shorthand::Method instead.

Want to give the shorthand method another name (like configure)? Have at it with alias and alias_method.

Shorthand

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