Question

i’m developing an application on Ruby on Rails and i’m stuck. I have a class that maps all the weird characters into a normal characters (i.e. é, è -> e ). I need this class in two models and since i don’t want to repeat code, i want to load it so the models can use it. Any idea how to do that?.

Edit *I upload the class*

class UtfAnalyzer < Ferret::Analysis::Analyzer
include Ferret::Analysis

CHARACTER_MAPPINGS = {
    ['à','á','â','ã','ä','å','ā','ă']         => 'a',
    ['æ']                                     => 'ae',
    ['ď','đ']                                 => 'd',
    ['ć','č','ĉ','ċ']                         => 'c',
    ['è','é','ê','ë','ē','ę','ě','ĕ','ė',]    => 'e',
    ['ƒ']                                     => 'f',
    ['ĝ','ğ','ġ','ģ']                         => 'g',
    ['ĥ','ħ']                                 => 'h',
    ['ì','ì','í','î','ï','ī','ĩ','ĭ']         => 'i',
    ['į','ı','ij','ĵ']                         => 'j',
    ['ķ','ĸ']                                 => 'k',
    ['ł','ľ','ĺ','ļ','ŀ']                     => 'l',
    ['ñ','ń','ň','ņ','ʼn','ŋ']                 => 'n',
    ['ò','ó','ô','õ','ö','ø','ō','ő','ŏ','ŏ'] => 'o',
    ['œ']                                     => 'oek',
    ['ą']                                     => 'q',
    ['ŕ','ř','ŗ']                             => 'r',
    ['ś','š','ş','ŝ','ș']                     => 's',
    ['ť','ţ','ŧ','ț']                         => 't',
    ['ù','ú','û','ü','ū','ů','ű','ŭ','ũ','ų'] => 'u',
    ['ŵ']                                     => 'w',
    ['ý','ÿ','ŷ']                             => 'y',
    ['ž','ż','ź']                             => 'z'
}
HTML_MAPPINGS = {
    ['à', 'á', 'À', 'Á', 'ä', 'Ä']                => 'a',
    ['è', 'é', 'È', 'É', 'ë', 'Ë']                => 'e',
    ['ì', 'í', 'Ì', 'Í', 'ï', 'Ï']                => 'i',
    ['ò', 'ó', 'Ò', 'Ó', 'ö', 'Ö']                => 'o',
    ['ù', 'ú', 'Ù', 'Ú', 'ü', 'Ü']                => 'u',
    ['ç', 'Ç']                                                            => 'ç'
}

def self.token_stream(field, str)
  ts = MappingFilter.new(RegExpTokenizer.new(str, /([a-zA-Z0-9ÑñàáäèéëìíïòóöùúüÀÁÈÉËÌÍÏÒÓÖÙÚÜçÇ]|(&([aeiouAEIOU](acute|grave|uml)|ccedil|Ccedil);))+/), HTML_MAPPINGS)
  ts = MappingFilter.new(StandardTokenizer.new(str), CHARACTER_MAPPINGS)
  ts = MappingFilter.new(ts, CHARACTER_MAPPINGS)
  ts = LowerCaseFilter.new(ts)
end

end

Answer 1

Use modules:

module CharConverter
  def convert(c)
    #your conversion logic here
  end
end

Then include the module in your models:

class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  include CharConverter
end

The method convert will be available for you in MyModel instance scope (as in MyModel.new.convert). In order to make convert available for you in MyModel class scope (as in MyModel.convert) replace include CharConverter with extend CharConverter.

You can find more info on the difference between extend and include here.