Question

I would like to make a string to become an attribute:

Model:
    Author
    attr_accessible :book1, book2, book3 etc...

I would like to retrieve 20 books in a lesser command

def do_something 
  self.book1     
  self.book2     
  self.book3     
  ....           
end              

This is a solution I came up with but how can I make the string become an attribute so I could retrieve the data.

def do_something             
  count = 0                  
  10.times do                
    self."book#{count += 1}"  
  end                        
end                           

Answer 1

This will work:

def do_something             
  count = 0                  
  10.times do                
    self.send("book#{count += 1}")  
  end                        
end     

Also try this, it’s simpler and it should work as well: self[:book1] or self['book1']

BTW this is weird design. Consider using array of books instead:

attr_accessible :books

...

self.books.each { |book| puts book }

self.books[0] # etc.