Question

I often write stuff that looks like this:

def AModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user

  def SomeCodeThatDoesSomeCalculations
    # some code here
  end

  def SomeCodeThatDoesSomeCalculations!
    self.SomeCodeThatDoesSomeCalculations
    self.save
  end
end

Is there a better way to generate the functions with the suffix “!” ?

Answer 1

If you’re doing it really often you can do smth like that:

class Model < ActiveRecord::Base

  def self.define_with_save(method_name)
    define_method "#{method_name}!" do
      send method_name
      save
    end
  end

  def save # stub method for test purpose
    puts 'saving...'
  end

  def do_stuff
    puts 'doing stuff...'
  end
  define_with_save :do_stuff

end

m = Model.new

m.do_stuff
# => 'doing stuff...'

m.do_stuff!
# => 'doing stuff...'
# => 'saving...'

If you want that in multiple models may be you’d like to create your own base class for them containing this define_with_save class method, or you can add it to ActiveRecord::Base itself if you are sure you need it.

Btw, I hope you’re not really naming you your methods in SomeCodeThatDoesSomeCalculations notation as they are usually named like some_code_that_does_some_calculations.