Question

I have a class, with some fake relationships I want to implement:

module FormStack
   class Connection
      def forms; end
      def fields; end   
   end 
end

I have metaprogramically generated classes for both forms, and fields (as they are RESTful resources, they share the same action names and params), and I want to include those methods in my fake relationships in my FormStack::Connection class. can this be done?

I essentially want <FromStack::Connection Instance>.forms to behave as if it were FormStack::Form, so I can do things like <connection>.forms.all or <connection>.forms.find(id).

Is this possible?
Any best practices I should maybe be looking at? (This seems a little strange to me, but I think it’s an elegant way to have the methods implemented in a useful way, while still having an ActiveRecord-esque abstraction of the restful resources / objects).

Here is the code I’m working with, if you want to look: https://github.com/TinderBox/formstack/tree/connection_instances

Answer 1

Unless there is a better way, this is how I’ve solved my problem for now:

def method_missing(meth, *args, &block)
    method_name = meth.to_s

    if "forms" == method_name
        FormStack::Form.connection = self
        FormStack::Form
    elsif ...
    else
        super
    end
end

https://github.com/TinderBox/formstack/blob/082793bed97e97cc65c703c8ca3cb382cbdf743a/lib/formstack/connection.rb