Named Array Slots

Sometimes you have an array of data that isn't quite complicated enough for a full-fledged data model, but you want to access elements by name rather than positionally. Probably you even have a bunch of these arrays with positions corresponding to named fields. These arrays might have come from a DBI query, or CSV, or parsing some arbitrary data file, but ultimately you have a need to make your code more readable and avoid poking at these data structures with error-prone magic numbers. What you actually want is a Ruby module that defines methods to access the fields, with which you can then extend the Array objects.

Suppose that your arrays represent users and have four elements, in order: name, gender, email, zip. The naïve, ad hoc way of doing things, then, is:

module MyFields
  def name
    self[0]
  end
  def name=(val)
    self[0] = val
  end
  def age
    self[1]
  end
  def age=(val)
    self[1] = val
  end
  def email
    self[2]
  end
  def email=(val)
    self[2] = val
  end
  def zip
    self[3]
  end
  def zip=(val)
    self[3] = val
  end
end

What a mess, and that's for just four fields! Let's do a little dynamic programming. It's still simple and ad hoc, but it's better:

module MyFields
  %w(name age email zip).each_with_index { |field,i|
    define_method(field) { self[i] }
    define_method("#{field}=") { |val| self[i] = val }
  }
end

Much better, and we can change the list of fields pretty easily. Still, if we have several different sets of fields (e.g. rows from several different database tables) that's a lot of syntax for something pretty simple. Also, if both the field names and data are coming from an external data source, you may only care about some limited number of those fields but still need to get all of them properly named in the correct order. Ultimately, you'd like to be able to take an array of arbitrary objects, convert the objects to strings, and get a module with which you can extend your row arrays out of it. Something like this:

class Array
  ConvertElementsToFields = lambda { |f|
    f = "#{f}" # get as a new string, even if it's already a String
    f.downcase!
    f.gsub!(/[^\w]+/, '_')
    f
  }
  def field_names_module(&convert)
    convert ||= ConvertElementsToFields
    fields = self
    Module.new do |mod|
      const_set 'Fields',
        fields.map(&convert).each_with_index { |f,i|
          f.freeze
          define_method(f) { self[i] }
          define_method("#{f}=") { |val| self[i] = val }
        }.freeze
      unless instance_methods.include? "field_list"
        define_method("field_list") { mod::Fields }
      end
    end
  end
end

The simple case, where we know the list of fields ahead of time, looks like this:

MyFields = %w(name gender email zip).field_names_module

The more complicated case where we don't know the field names/positions ahead of time is almost as easy. Consider a result from a DBI query:

MyFields = result.fetch_fields.field_names_module { |field| field.name }

Still pretty easy, even for the complicated case. Enjoy!

Just a Nifty Meta-Meta Tidbit

Sometimes you just write a piece of code that makes you feel like you should give it a violently animating background. I'm just not that cool, though, so I'll just go with my usual syntax coloring:

def hashtastic(value)
  (Proc === value) ?
    lambda { |h,k| h[k] = Hash.new(&value) } :
    lambda { |h,k| h[k] = value }
end

a = Hash.new(&hashtastic(hashtastic(hashtastic({}))))
b = a[0]
c = b[0]
d = c[0]

p a

Try it out. I think you'll find you like it. Enjoy!