Skip iteration from yield block in ruby - ruby

Trying to use an ill-conceived framework which collects a list of results from a passed-in block, effectively this:
def sigh(&block)
r = (1..3).collect do |i|
yield(i)
end
# do something with r
end
I want the block I pass in to filter the items, but to skip the collection iteration rather than adding nil to the results like next would (since the framework doesn't compact them.) What's a simple way other than patching the gem? I.e.,
sigh {|i| next unless i == 1 } # results in [1,nil,nil] rather than just [1]

The bad news is that you'll have to patch the gem. Having your code block called by the gem doesn't give your code any special powers to affect how the calling code processes the block's return values.
The good news is that patching the gem can usually be done with a "monkey patch," where your program reopens the gem's class or module and makes the change. In this made-up example, we'll show the class nested in a module, since many gems make use of nested classes and modules:
require 'somegem'
# Monkey patch to cause Somegem's do_something_cool method
# to ignore the SomethingBadHappened exception
module SomeGem
class SomeClass
alias_method :orig_do_something_cool, :do_something_cool
def do_something_cool
orig_do_something_cool
rescue SomethingBadHappened
end
end
end

There is no way to do what you are asking for. If you post more details on the framework you are using, though, someone here may be able to help you think of a different way to work around the problem.

You'll need to patch, like others said. If you want a collection of i which satisfy some condition, the best choice would to replace collect with find_all, and then you could use:
sigh { |i| i == 1 } #=> [1]

Related

Recursively check if nested elements exist

Just to give you a background, I'm using Ruby for creating automated tests along with Selenium, Cucumber, Capybara and SitePrism. I have some tests that need to check the text of a certain element on the page, for example:
def get_section_id
return section.top.course.section_id.text
end
However, I would like to check if all the parent elements exist before calling .text on the nested course_and_section_id element. For example, to check the text of this particular element I would do:
if(has_section? && section.has_top? && section.top.has_course? && section.top.course.has_section_id?)
return section.top.course.section_id.text
end
Is there any way to recursively check if something exists in Ruby like this? Something that could be called like: has_text?(section.top.course.section_id) maybe?
There is nothing builtin to ruby that would do this because the methods you're calling return the element, or raise an exception. If they returned the element or nil then the suggestion of Cary Swoveland to use &. would be the answer.
The critical thing to remember here is what you're actually trying to do. Since you're writing automated tests, you're (most likely) not trying to check whether or not the elements exist (tests should be predictable and repeatable so you should know the elements are going to exist) but rather just wait for the elements to exist before getting the text. This means what you really want is probably more like
def get_section_id
wait_until_section_visible
section.wait_until_top_visible
section.top.wait_until_course_visible
section.top.course.wait_until_section_id_visible
return section.top.course.section_id.text
end
You can write a helper method to make that easier, something like
def get_text_from_nested_element(*args)
args.reduce(self) do |scope, arg|
scope.send("wait_until_#{arg}_visible")
scope.send(arg)
end.text
end
which could be called as
def get_section_id
get_text_from_nested_element(:section, :top, :course, :section_id)
end
It sounds like you may want something like the following.
arr = [section, :top, :course, :section_id, :text]
arr.reduce { |e,m| e && e.respond_to?(m) && e.public_send(m) }
Because reduce has no argument the initial value of the memo e is section. If e becomes nil or false it will remain that value.
Whilst this is a bit outdated, the fact that &. won't work here when it is the most elegant perhaps gives rise for this being a useful feature
If you can raise it on GH with a sample page where this would be useful then we could look at getting it introduced
Luke

Get list of classes and methods that call a specific global method

I have a method called $muffinize and I would like to find where it can be found in my code. In other words, given the following code:
class A
def foo
$muffinize(1)
end
def bar
...
end
end
class B
def shoop
$muffinize(2)
end
def woop
...
end
end
class C
def nope
...
end
end
I would like to the result to be (written to a file):
A:foo
B:shoop
I was thinking of accomplishing this with a Regex, but I was wondering if there would be some way of accomplishing this with Ruby meta-programming (which I might be accidentally using as a buzz-word)?
Kernel.caller() will help you show the line number and method that is calling it at runtime. If you put something like puts caller(1,1) in your muffinize function it will output those locations, but only if they are called at runtime.
If you want to do offline source analysis, you need to parse the AST (abstract syntax tree) with something like https://github.com/whitequark/parser.
Here is a quick example with ripper (built into new rubies) - this isn't strictly an AST but it's not extracting classes either
#!/usr/local/env ruby
require 'ripper'
#require 'pry'
contents = File.open('example.rb').read
code = Ripper.lex(contents)
code.each do |line|
if(line[1] == :on_ident and line[2] == "muffinize")
puts "muffinize found at line #{line.first.first}"
end
end
Ignoring the fact that your code isn't even syntactically valid, this is simply not possible.
Here's a simple example:
class A
def foo
bar
muffinize(1)
end
end
A#foo will call Object#muffinize if and only if bar terminates. Which means that figuring out whether or not A#foo calls Object#muffinize requires to solve the Halting Problem.
By getting a list of classes and methods via ri, I was then able to analyze each method to retreive their source code using the method_source gem and then searching for muffinize. This does not rule out the possibility of muffinize from appearing in a comment or a string, but I consider the likelihood of this happening to be small enough to ignore.

Is there a short way to write `{|x| x}`?

We often shorten a block using the & notation on a symbol like this:
some_array.group_by(&:foo)
Is there a similar way to shorten expressions like {|x| x}?
some_array.group_by{|x| x}
If there were a method Object#self that returns self, then we can do
some_array.group_by(&:self)
but unfortunately, there is no such method. In terms of the number of characters, it may be longer, but readability improves.
Yes. #itself was implemented in Ruby 2.2.0.
You can access the Ruby core team discussion about this feature here.
As an interesting analogue, the #ergo method has been proposed, which would yield the receiver to a given block.
If you haven't yet upgraded to Ruby 2.2.0, you may wish to backport #itself and/or define #ergo as follows:
class Object
def itself; self end
def ergo
fail ArgumentError, "Block expected!" unless block_given?
yield self
end
end
And then:
some_array.group_by &:itself
Well, there's no built-in as far as I know, but you can make a reusable identity block:
id = Proc.new {|x| x}
some_array.group_by(&id)
And then if you really wish this were a language feature:
class Object
def it
Proc.new {|x| x}
end
end
And then you can do:
some_array.group_by(&it)
wherever you like. This may void your warranty.
Yes! The method Kernel#itself was added in Ruby 2.2.0. This method simply returns the object it was called on, so you can write:
some_array.group_by(&:itself)
You can see the extensive discussion of this feature here: https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/6373. The patch was submitted by Rafael França in message #53. You can see it in the official Ruby source by looking in object.c.
If you are using a version of Ruby older than 2.2.0, you can easily add Kernel#itself into your project by putting this code somewhere in your project and making sure it gets required:
module Kernel
def itself
self
end
end if !Kernel.instance_methods.include?(:itself)
However, monkey-patching a part of the Ruby core like that can be dangerous and I would not recommend it if you are making reusable code, like a gem. Instead I would recommend just making your own identity function, as suggested by user2246674:
module MyLibrary
IDENT = Proc.new { |x| x }
array.group_by(&IDENT)
end

How to get the name of the calling method?

is there a way in Ruby to find the calling method name inside of a method?
For example:
class Test
def self.foo
Fooz.bar
end
end
class Fooz
def self.bar
# get Test.foo or foo
end
end
puts caller[0]
or perhaps...
puts caller[0][/`.*'/][1..-2]
In Ruby 2.0.0, you can use:
caller_locations(1,1)[0].label
It's much faster than the Ruby 1.8+ solution:
caller[0][/`([^']*)'/, 1]
Will get included in backports when I get the time (or a pull request!).
Use caller_locations(1,1)[0].label (for ruby >= 2.0)
Edit: My answer was saying to use __method__ but I was wrong, it returns the current method name.
I use
caller[0][/`([^']*)'/, 1]
How about
caller[0].split("`").pop.gsub("'", "")
Much cleaner imo.
Instead you can write it as library function and make a call wherever needed. The code goes as follows :
module CallChain
def self.caller_method(depth=1)
parse_caller(caller(depth+1).first).last
end
private
# Copied from ActionMailer
def self.parse_caller(at)
if /^(.+?):(\d+)(?::in `(.*)')?/ =~ at
file = Regexp.last_match[1]
line = Regexp.last_match[2].to_i
method = Regexp.last_match[3]
[file, line, method]
end
end
end
To trigger the above module method you need to call like this:
caller = CallChain.caller_method
code reference from
In order to see the caller and callee information in any language, whether it be ruby or java or python, you would always want to look at the stack trace. In some languages, such as Rust and C++, there are options built into the compiler to turn on some sort of profiling mechanism you can view during run time. I do belive one exists for Ruby called ruby-prof.
And as mentioned above, you could look into the execution stack for ruby. This execution stack is an array containing backtrace location objects.
Essentially all you need to know about this command is as follows:
caller(start=1, length=nil) → array or nil

How to get argument names using reflection

I would like to do some fairly heavy-duty reflection in Ruby. I want to create a function that returns the names of the arguments of various calling functions higher up the call stack (just one higher would be enough but why stop there?). I could use Kernel.caller, go to the file and parse the argument list but that would be ugly and unreliable.
The function that I would like would work in the following way:
module A
def method1( tuti, fruity)
foo
end
def method2(bim, bam, boom)
foo
end
def foo
print caller_args[1].join(",") #the "1" mean one step up the call stack
end
end
A.method1
#prints "tuti,fruity"
A.method2
#prints "bim, bam, boom"
I would not mind using ParseTree or some similar tool for this task but looking at Parsetree, it is not obvious how to use it for this purpose. Creating a C extension like this is another possibility but it would be nice if someone had already done it for me.
I can see that I'll probably need some kind of C extension. I suppose that means my question is what combination of C extension would work most easily. I don't think caller+ParseTree would be enough by themselves.
As far as why I would like to do this goes, rather than saying "automatic debugging", perhaps I should say that I would like to use this functionality to do automatic checking of the calling and return conditions of functions:
def add x, y
check_positive
return x + y
end
Where check_positive would throw an exception if x and y weren't positive. Obviously, there would be more to it than that but hopefully this gives enough motivation.
In Ruby 1.9.2, you can trivially get the parameter list of any Proc (and thus of course also of any Method or UnboundMethod) with Proc#parameters:
A.instance_method(:method1).parameters # => [[:req, :tuti], [:req, :fruity]]
The format is an array of pairs of symbols: type (required, optional, rest, block) and name.
For the format you want, try
A.instance_method(:method1).parameters.map(&:last).map(&:to_s)
# => ['tuti', 'fruity']
Of course, that still doesn't give you access to the caller, though.
I suggest you take a look at Merb's action-args library.
require 'rubygems'
require 'merb'
include GetArgs
def foo(bar, zed=42)
end
method(:foo).get_args # => [[[:bar], [:zed, 42]], [:zed]]
If you don't want to depend on Merb, you can choose and pick the best parts from the source code in github.
I have a method that is quite expensive and only almost works.
$shadow_stack = []
set_trace_func( lambda {
|event, file, line, id, binding, classname|
if event == "call"
$shadow_stack.push( eval("local_variables", binding) )
elsif event == "return"
$shadow_stack.pop
end
} )
def method1( tuti, fruity )
foo
end
def method2(bim, bam, boom)
foo
x = 10
y = 3
end
def foo
puts $shadow_stack[-2].join(", ")
end
method1(1,2)
method2(3,4,4)
Outputs
tuti, fruity
bim, bam, boom, x, y
I'm curious as to why you'd want such functionality in such a generalized manner.
I'm curious how you think this functionality would allow for automatic debugging? You'd still need to inject calls to your "foo" function. In fact, something based on set_trace_func is more able to be automatic, as you don't need to touch existing code. Indeed this is how debug.rb is implemented, in terms of set_trace_func.
The solutions to your precise question are indeed basically, as you outlined. use caller + parsetree, or open the file and grab the data that way. There is no reflection capability that I am aware of that will let you get the names of arguments. You can approve upon my solution by grabbing the associated method object and calling #arity to then infer what of local_variables are arguments, but though it appears the result of that function is ordered, I'm not sure it is safe to rely on that. If you don't mind me asking, once you have the data and the interface you describe, what are you going to do with it? Automatic debugging was not what initially came to mind when I imagined uses for this functionality, although perhaps it is failing of imagination on my part.
Aha!
I would approach this differently then. There are several ruby libraries for doing design by contract already, including ruby-contract, rdbc, etc.
Another option is to write something like:
def positive
lambda { |x| x >= 0 }
end
def any
lambda { |x| true }
end
class Module
def define_checked_method(name, *checkers, &body)
define_method(name) do |*args|
unless checkers.zip(args).all? { |check, arg| check[arg] }
raise "bad argument"
end
body.call(*args)
end
end
end
class A
define_checked_method(:add, positive, any) do |x, y|
x + y
end
end
a = A.new
p a.add(3, 2)
p a.add(3, -1)
p a.add(-4, 2)
Outputs
5
2
checked_rb.rb:13:in `add': bad argument (RuntimeError)
from checked_rb.rb:29
Of course this can be made much more sophisticated, and indeed that's some of what the libraries I mentioned provided, but perhaps this is a way to get you where you want to go without necessarily taking the path you planned to use to get there?
if you want the value for the default values, too, there's the "arguments" gem
$ gem install rdp-arguments
$ irb
>> require 'arguments'
>> require 'test.rb' # class A is defined here
>> Arguments.names(A, :go)
In fact, the method you describe clearly fails to distinguish arguments from local variables while also failing to work automatically
That's because what you're trying to do is not something which is supported. It's possible (everything is possible in ruby), but there's no documented or known way to do it.
Either you can eval the backtrace like what logan suggested, or you can bust out your C compiler and hack sourcecode for ruby. I'm reasonably confident there aren't any other ways to do this.

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