Question

This question is strictly about Struct behavior, so please no “why in the wide world of sports are you doing it that way?”

This code is INCORRECT, but it should illustrate what I am trying to understand about Ruby Structs:

class Person < Struct.new(:name, :last_name)
end

class ReligiousPerson < Person(:religion)
end

class PoliticalPerson < Person(:political_affiliation)
end

### Main ###

person = Person.new('jackie', 'jack')
pious_person = ReligiousPerson.new('billy', 'bill', 'Zoroastrianism')
political_person = PoliticalPerson.new('frankie', 'frank', 'Connecticut for Lieberman')

As you can see, there’s an attempt to define a class inheritance using Structs. However, Ruby gets cranky when you try to initialize ReligiousPerson or PoliticalPerson, of course. So given this illustrative code, how is it possible to inherit named params using this type of class inheritance using Structs?

Answer 1

You could define new Structs, based in Person:

class Person < Struct.new(:name, :last_name)
end

class ReligiousPerson < Struct.new(*Person.members, :religion)  
end

class PoliticalPerson < Struct.new(*Person.members, :political_affiliation)
end

### Main ###

person = Person.new('jackie', 'jack')
p pious_person = ReligiousPerson.new('billy', 'bill', 'Zoroastrianism')
p political_person = PoliticalPerson.new('frankie', 'frank', 'Connecticut for Lieberman')

Result:

#<struct ReligiousPerson name="billy", last_name="bill", religion="Zoroastrianism">
#<struct PoliticalPerson name="frankie", last_name="frank", political_affiliation="Connecticut for Lieberman">

Immediate after posting my answer I had an idea:

class Person < Struct.new(:name, :last_name)
  def self.derived_struct( *args )
    Struct.new(*self.members, *args)
  end
end

class ReligiousPerson < Person.derived_struct(:religion)  
end

class PoliticalPerson < Person.derived_struct(:political_affiliation)
end

### Main ###

person = Person.new('jackie', 'jack')
p pious_person = ReligiousPerson.new('billy', 'bill', 'Zoroastrianism')
p political_person = PoliticalPerson.new('frankie', 'frank', 'Connecticut for Lieberman')

Works fine!

You may also add #derived_struct to Struct:

class Struct
  def self.derived_struct( *args )
    Struct.new(*self.members, *args)
  end
end