Idiom for Class variables

Rails
1

I want do do something like this

class MyClass

def default
self.default
end

def self.default
return @@default if @@default
self.default = ‘this’
end

def self.default=(value)
@@default = value
end
end

a = MyClass.new
=> nil
a.default
=> “this”

But, this does not work. What is the idiom to get this to happen?

2

On Jun 2, 9:31 pm, James B. [email protected]
wrote:

I want do do something like this

class MyClass

def default
self.default
end

this creates an infinite recursion - self.default doesn’t call the
class method, it’s equivalent to writing

def default
default
end

which obviously doesn’t work.

You could write
def default
MyClass.default
end

or, equivalently

def default
self.class.default
end

the code as is won’t quite work, since ruby will complain if you try
to access an unset class variable, so you need some thing like

class MyClass
@@default = 'this
…
end

@@ variables are visible by instances as well as classes though, so
you could also do

def default
@@default
end

Lastly, active support already includes the cattr_accessor helper that
will create accessors for you

Fred

3

I found this subject well explained in this rather enlightening post
attributed to DHH:

http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk/browse_thread/thread/51023b181ab950dc

4

Frederick C. wrote:

Lastly, active support already includes the cattr_accessor helper that
will create accessors for you

Ahh, I had run across this before but I could not remember what it was
called or where it was found. Thanks for the lucid explanation about
the rest of it as well.

Regards,