Creating objects from YAML, already initialized constant - ruby

Question

Two problems, that probably are related:
I'm retreiving a number of 'persons' from a YAML-file to an array, and now i'm trying to create classes from that array.
These objects are then to placed in a new array.
It actually works out fine, if you dont consider the fact that the object added last replaces all the previously added.
In my case i get five identical copies of object #5, where i rather like to see five different ones.
My guess is that the error results somewhere in my iterator to get all the 'persons' from the YAML.
I'm getting a cuople of warnings, regarding the 're-use' of constants:
NEWSTR and NEWAL.
getPost = 0
loopa = 0
while loopa < personsInYAML
NEWSTR = TEST.fetch(getPost)
NEWAL = NEWSTR.split(' ')
getPost+=1
puts "*****************************************"
nyloop = loopa+1
puts "PERSON: " + nyloop.to_s + " name: " + NEWAL.fetch(1)
nameToArray = Person.new
outputArray.insert(loopa, nameToArray)
loopa+=1
end
Persons-class
class Person
def initialize
#name
#age
#length
#weight
#misc
end
def name
name = NEWAL.fetch(1)
return name
end
if NEWAL.include?("age:")
def age
x = NEWAL.index("age:")+1
age = NEWAL.fetch(x)
return age
end
end
if NEWAL.include?("length:")
def length
x = NEWAL.index("length:")+1
length = NEWAL.fetch(x)
return length
end
end
if NEWAL.include?("weight:")
def weight
x = NEWAL.index("weight:")+1
weight = NEWAL.fetch(x)
return weight
end
end
if NEWAL.include?("misc:")
def misc
x = NEWAL.index("misc:")+1
misc = NEWAL.fetch(x)
return misc
end
end
end

Answer 1

You're taking the wrong approach to populating your Person class. The only thing your loop is doing is to create brand new Person classes and stick them in an array. It isn't actually initializing the person class at all.
It looks like what you are trying to do is to use a constant (which you don't hold constant) to pass information to the Person class. However, the code that you have in your Person class that is outside of the methods is only going to be run once - when the class loads for the first time, NOT at the time that you make a new Person.
You'd be better off changing your initialize method to take some arguments, and to create the class with appropriate arguments within the loop.
def initialize(name, age = nil, length = nil, weight = nil, misc = nil)
# assign instance variables here
#name = name
...
end
You appear to be trying to create dynamic accessors to the instance variables. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Just define accessors on all of them, and handle the case where the instance variables are nil in whatever code is calling the Person class.