Docile

Definition: Ready to accept control or instruction; submissive [1]

Tired of overly complex DSL libraries and hairy meta-programming?

Let's make our Ruby DSLs more docile...

Usage

Let's treat an Array's methods as its own DSL:

Docile.dsl_eval [] do
  push 1
  push 2
  pop
  push 3
end
#=> [1, 3]

Mutating (changing) the array is fine, but what you probably really want as your DSL is actually a Builder Pattern.

For example, if you have a PizzaBuilder class that can already build a Pizza:

@sauce_level = :extra
pizza = PizzaBuilder.new.cheese.pepperoni.sauce(@sauce_level).build
#=> #<Pizza:0x00001009dc398 @cheese=true, @pepperoni=true, @bacon=false, @sauce=:extra>

Then you can use this same PizzaBuilder class as a DSL:

@sauce_level = :extra
pizza = Docile.dsl_eval PizzaBuilder.new do
  cheese
  pepperoni
  sauce @sauce_level
end.build
#=> #<Pizza:0x00001009dc398 @cheese=true, @pepperoni=true, @bacon=false, @sauce=:extra>

It's just that easy!

Features

method lookup falls back from the DSL object to the block's context
local variable lookup falls back from the DSL object to the block's context
instance variables are from the block's context only
nested dsl evaluation

Installation

$ gem install docile

Documentation

Documentation hosted on rubydoc.info: Docile Documentation Or, read the code hosted on github.com: Docile Code

Note on Patches/Pull Requests