assigning a value to many members of a class - ruby

Question

class A
attr_accessor :dab
....
end
Now I have an array of instances of A, say
arr = [A.new, A.new, A.new]
And now I want to set a value to all instances of class A present in the array arr. Is there a shortcut in ruby/rails to do this?
In addition, I do have A inherited from ActiveRecord::Base
And my actual need is:
A.find_all_by_some_condition.all.dabs = 2
So, all found objects will have dab set to 2.
Is there shortcut for this?

Answer 1

To get the items of class A from an array you can use select/find_all
arr.select { |el| el.class == A } or arr.select { |el| A === el }
To achieve your actual result though you are looking to assign a value to several objects, not their corresponding class. class A does not define the actual objects it just defines the blueprint that the objects use when getting created. So finding a way to assign a value of all instances of A is not what you are after (although I might have missed the point of what you were asking for)
To assign a value to an array of object this works:
A.find_all_by_some_condition.each { |a| a.dab = 2 }
Perhaps you want to save them after that, now arr.each(&:save) might come in handy. Go look up the ampersand if you don't know it already. Very useful.

Answer 2

You can't do that directly by default, however you could build something like that using Ruby's method_missing.
Two solutions:
Solution 1 - Use a wrapper class
We'll call this class MArray for multi-assign-array.
class MArray
def initialize(inner_array)
#inner = inner_array
end
def method_missing(meth, value)
# Check if assignement, and if it is then run mass-assign
if meth.to_s =~ /^\w+=$/
#inner.each { |itm| itm.send(meth, value) }
else
raise ArgumentError, "MArray: not an assignment"
end
end
end
We also need to add support for MArray in Array, so that the wrapping will take place. We'll call the method mas for "mass-assignment":
class Array
def mas
# Wrap MArray around self
MArray.new(self)
end
end
Usage is simple:
Blob = Struct.new(:dab)
arr = [Blob.new] * 3
arr.mas.dab = 123
arr
=> [#<struct Blob dab=123>, #<struct Blob dab=123>, #<struct Blob dab=123>]
Solution 2 - Create mass-assignment support directly into Array
This is a bit more "dangerous" since we directly modify method_missing in Array. It could create some strange side-effects (for example if method_missing has already been redefined by some other library, or you accidentally call a mass-assign while you didn't mean to).
It works by trying to detect assignments with plural words (words ending with s), and then triggering the mass-assignment:
class Array
def method_missing(meth, *args, &block)
# Check for plural assignment, and as an added safety check also
# see if all elements in the array support the assignment:
if meth.to_s =~ /^(\w+)s=$/ &&
self.all? { |itm| itm.respond_to?("#{$1}=") }
self.each { |itm| itm.send("#{$1}=", *args) }
else
super
end
end
end
Usage then becomes even shorter than with MArray:
Blob = Struct.new(:dab)
arr = [Blob.new] * 3
arr.dabs = 123
arr
=> [#<struct Blob dab=123>, #<struct Blob dab=123>, #<struct Blob dab=123>]