How to cleanly initialize attributes in Ruby with new?

ruby object new-operator ruby-1.9.3
B Seven picture B Seven · Oct 6, 2012 · Viewed 19.4k times · Source 
class Foo
  attr_accessor :name, :age, :email, :gender, :height

  def initalize params
    @name = params[:name]
    @age = params[:age]
    @email = params[:email]
    .
    .
    .
  end

This seems like a silly way of doing it. What is a better/more idiomatic way of initalizing objects in Ruby?

Ruby 1.9.3

Answer

Joshua Cheek picture Joshua Cheek · Oct 6, 2012

You can just iterate over the keys and invoke the setters. I prefer this, because it will catch if you pass an invalid key.

class Foo
  attr_accessor :name, :age, :email, :gender, :height

  def initialize params = {}
    params.each { |key, value| send "#{key}=", value }
  end
end

foo = Foo.new name: 'Josh', age: 456
foo.name  # => "Josh"
foo.age   # => 456
foo.email # => nil

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