Question

I have recently started a project in Ruby on Rails. I used to do all my projects before in Python but decided to give Ruby a shot.

In the projects I wrote in Python I used a nice little technique explained by the correct answer in this post:

Dictionary or If statements, Jython

I use this technique due to Python not having a native switch function and it also get rid of big if else blocks

I have been trying to do recreate the above method in Ruby but can’t seem to quite get it.

Could anyone help me out?

Answer 1

If you only need to call a method by its name stored in a string, standard Ruby way of doing it is using method Object#send:

def extractTitle dom
  puts "title from #{dom}"
end

def extractMetaTags dom
  puts "metatags from #{dom}"
end

dom = 'foo'

type = 'extractTitle'
send type, dom
#=> title from foo
type = 'extractMetaTags'
send type, dom
#=> metatags from foo

Otherwise, you can use Ruby’s case statement, as already suggested.