conditional chaining in ruby

Question

Is there a good way to chain methods conditionally in Ruby?

What I want to do functionally is

if a && b && c  my_object.some_method_because_of_a.some_method_because_of_b.some_method_because_of_c elsif a && b && !c  my_object.some_method_because_of_a.some_method_because_of_b elsif a && !b && c  my_object.some_method_because_of_a.some_method_because_of_c  etc... 

So depending on a number of conditions I want to work out what methods to call in the method chain.

So far my best attempt to do this in a "good way" is to conditionally build the string of methods, and use eval, but surely there is a better, more ruby, way?

Answer 1

You could put your methods into an arry and then execute everything in this array

l= [] l << :method_a if a l << :method_b if b l << :method_c if c  l.inject(object) { |obj, method| obj.send(method) } 

Object#send executes the method with the given name. Enumerable#inject iterates over the array, while giving the block the last returned value and the current array item.

If you want your method to take arguments you could also do it this way

l= [] l << [:method_a, arg_a1, arg_a2] if a l << [:method_b, arg_b1] if b l << [:method_c, arg_c1, arg_c2, arg_c3] if c  l.inject(object) { |obj, method_and_args| obj.send(*method_and_args) }