Question

I am building a Calendar object. It is important that I have both a date object and date as a string.

class Calendar

  def initialize(on, off, date_string)
    @on = on.to_i
    @off = off.to_i
    @date_string = date_string
  end
end

I have a method that converts the date to a date Object. How to do I handle that in initialize. Do I put in a dummy value and then call it later? Do I call it from inside initialize. What is more idiomatic Ruby?

Answer 1

I’d put it right in the initializer like this:

class Calendar

  DATE_FORMAT = "%d/%m/%Y"

  def initialize(on, off, date_string)
    @on = on.to_i
    @off = off.to_i
    @date = Date.strptime(date_string, DATE_FORMAT)
  end
end