MultiSend

MultiSend makes it easier to do some advanced metaprogramming with Ruby.

Ruby takes after Smalltalk's message sending paradigm. This is a powerful abstraction, and allows for some pretty awesome metaprogramming. By default, Object#send only allows you to send one message... MultiSend provides a way to extend that, making it even more powerful.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'multi_send'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install multi_send

Usage

MultiSend.array(object, *messages)

This works much like Object#send. MultiSend will send each item in order to the object, so the following lines are equivalent:

(5 + 5).even?.to_s
5.send("+", 5).send(:even?).send(:to_s)
MultiSend.array(5, ["+", 5], :even?, :to_s)
# with refinements/monkey patches:
5.send_array(["+", 5], :even?, :to_s)

MultiSend.hash(object, **messages)

This sends the **messages hash to object. Each key is a message, and the key's value is the argument. If the key's value is an array, then it works with all of them. So the following is equivalent:

"hello".split("").include?("h")
"hello".send(:split, "").send(:include?, "h")
MultiSend.hash("hello", split: "", include?: "h")
# with refinements,
"hello".send_hash(split: "", include?: "h")

MultiSend.do(object, [*messages|**messages])

This one determines whether or not the messages parameter is a hash or an array, and delegates to the correct method above.

Refinements/Monkey Patches

You can enable the refinements via using MultiSend. If you want them available application-wide, then require 'multi_send/object' to enable the monkey patches.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release to create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

  1. Fork it ( https://github.com/get-vitamin-c/multi_send/fork )
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  5. Create a new Pull Request