in Ruby can I automatically populate instance variables somehow in the initialize method?

Question

in Ruby can I automatically populate instance variables somehow in the initialize method?

For example if I had:

class Weekend
  attr_accessor :start_date, :end_date, :title, :description, :location

  def initialize(params)
    # SOMETHING HERE TO AUTO POPULATE INSTANCE VARIABLES WITH APPROPRIATE PARAMS
  end

end

Answer 1

You can use instance_variable_set like this:

params.each do |key, value|
  self.instance_variable_set("@#{key}".to_sym, value)
end

Answer 2

To keep things simple:

class Weekend
  attr_accessor :start_date, :end_date, :title, :description, :location

  def initialize(params)
    @start_date = params[:start_date] # I don't really know the structure of params but you have the idea
    @end_date   = params[:end_date]
  end
end

You could do something smarter with a twist of metaprogramming but is this really necessary?