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introduction

doodle is a Ruby gem for creating extended attribute accessors with defaults, conversions and validations.

doodle is eco-friendly - it does not globally modify Object, Class or Module, nor does it pollute instances with its own instance variables (e.g. it plays nice with yaml).

features

• initialization
• • using positional arguments
  • with named arguments
  • by block
• defaults
• initial values
• validation at attribute and class levels
• conversions for attributes and classes
• collectors to help in defining simple DSLs
• works for classes, instances and singletons

Doodle also supports reflection, serialization to and from YAML and XML, and command line argument processing.

example

Putting all this together, you can initialize objects like this:

event = Event "Festival" do
  date '2009-04-01'
  place "The muddy field"
  place "Beer tent" do
    event "Drinking"
  end
end
pp event
# >> #<Event:0x5d2b2c
# >>  @date=#<Date: 4909845/2,0,2299161>,
# >>  @locations=
# >>   [#<Location:0x5baf2c @events=[], @name="The muddy field">,
# >>    #<Location:0x5aca58
# >>     @events=[#<Event:0x59e3f4 @locations=[], @name="Drinking">],
# >>     @name="Beer tent">],
# >>  @name="Festival">

from a definition like this:

class Location < Doodle
  has :name, :kind => String
  has :events, :collect => :Event
end

class Event
  # or if you want to inherit from another class
  include Doodle::Core
  BASEDATE = Date.civil(2009, 01, 01)

  has :name, :kind => String
  has Date do
    default { Date.today }
    must "be >= #{BASEDATE}" do |value|
      value >= BASEDATE
    end
    from String do |s|
      Date.parse(s)
    end
  end
  has :locations, :collect => { :place => :Location }
end

installation

$ sudo gem install doodle

or

C:\> gem install doodle

depending on which way you swing ;)

compatibility

doodle has been tested with Ruby 1.8.6, 1.8.7, 1.9.1 and JRuby 1.1.6. Getting it to work with Rubinius is underway.

similar libraries

You might also be interested in some of the many similar libraries.