Isolate dependencies while building object relationships in ruby - ruby

Question

I'm practicing OOP for the first time by modeling my application domain (public high school) as objects, and I'm stuck on how to create relationships between the classes without introducing lots of external dependencies.
I have lots of relationships I want to construct, so in hopes of learning the general principle I'm giving two classes and sample objects here to illustrate the difficulty I'm having.
I have two classes Gradeand Transcript. Every instance of Transcript has an instance variable #mark, which right now is a string. I collected all the instances of each class a grades hash and a transcripts hash.
Question: How can I modify these classes so that #mark references the corresponding Grade instance?
(or, is that the wrong approach entirely?)
Grade has an instance for every possible final grade students can receive
class Grade
attr_accessor :mark, :alpha_equivalent, :numeric_range_low, :numeric_range_high, :numeric_qquivalent, :pass_fail_equivalent, :description
def initialize(args)
#mark = args["Mark"]
#alpha_equivalent = args["AlphaEquivalent"]
#numeric_range_low = args["NumericRangeLow"]
#numeric_range_high = args["NumericRangeHigh"]
#numeric_equivalent = args["NumericEquivalent"]
#pass_fail_equivalent = args["PassFailEquivalent"]
#description = args["Description"]
end
end
Sample object from the grades hash:
grades["100"] =>
#<Grade:0x007f9fcb077d68
#alpha_equivalent="100",
#description="100 out of 100",
#mark="100",
#numeric_equivalent="100",
#numeric_range_high="100",
#numeric_range_low="100",
#pass_fail_equivalent="P">
Transcript has instances for every final grade the student has ever received for all the courses they've studied
class Transcript
attr_accessor :student_id, :last_name, :first_name, :grade, :official_class, :school, :year, :term, :course, :course_title, :mark, :pass_fail, :credits
def initialize(args)
#student_id = args["StudentID"]
#last_name = args["LastName"]
#first_name = args["FirstName"]
#grade = args["Grade"]
#official_class = args["OffClass"]
#school = args["school"]
#year = args["Year"]
#term = args["Term"]
#course = args["Course"]
#course_title = args["Course Title"]
#mark = args["Mark"]
#credits = args["Credits"]
#grade_entry_cohort = args["GEC"]
end
end
Sample object from the transcripts hash:
transcripts["foobar-COURSE1-100"] =>
#<Transcript:0x007f9fce8786b8
#course="COURSE1",
#course_title="Example Course",
#credits="5",
#first_name="FOO",
#grade="100",
#grade_entry_cohort="V",
#last_name="BAR",
#mark="100",
#official_class="000",
#school="1",
#student_id="0123",
#term="1",
#year="2000">
I'm instantiating all the objects from CSV source files and then collecting them into a hash because I wanted to be able to address them directly.

Answer 1

Sounds like you need to want Transcript#grade to return a Grade instance. So let's make a method for that:
class Grade
def self.all
#all ||= {}
end
def self.find(mark)
all[mark]
end
end
Now, Grade.all needs to be populated. This could be achieved like this from your CSV:
grade_args = %w[alpha_equivalent description mark numeric_equivalent numeric_range_high numeric_range_low pass_fail_equivalent]
CSV.parse { |row| Grade.all.merge(csv['mark'] => Grade.new(row.slice(*grade_args)}
Now, we can modify Transcript like this:
class Transcript
def initialize(args)
#args = args
end
def grade
#grade ||= Grade.find(args['mark'])
end
private
attr_reader :args
end

Answer 2

Assuming that you've created the grades hash earlier:
# read args from csv
# id built from first, last, course, and grade
transcripts[id] = Transcript.
new(args.merge('Mark' => grades[args['Mark']])
It uses Hash#merge to extend args with an instance of Grade that was built earlier.