Ruby String to Class Name

ruby metaprogramming
Telmo picture Telmo · Mar 14, 2011 · Viewed 29.7k times · Source

I am trying to create a new class to that will inherit from ActiveRecord::Base the class needs to be dynamically generated from a string

"general_systems".camelize.singularize = Class.new < ActiveRecord::Base

However I keep getting the error:

undefined method `singularize=' for "GeneralSystems":String

I've also tried to constantize the string

>> foo = "general_systems".camelize.singularize
=> "GeneralSystem"
>> foo.constantize
NameError: uninitialized constant GeneralSystem
    from /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/activesupport-3.0.5/lib/active_support/inflector/methods.rb:124:in `block in constantize'
    from /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/activesupport-3.0.5/lib/active_support/inflector/methods.rb:123:in `each'
    from /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/activesupport-3.0.5/lib/active_support/inflector/methods.rb:123:in `constantize'
    from /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/activesupport-3.0.5/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/inflections.rb:43:in `constantize'
    from (irb):4
    from /usr/bin/irb:12:in `<main>'
>> foo.constantize = Class.new
NoMethodError: undefined method `constantize=' for "GeneralSystem":String
    from (irb):5
    from /usr/bin/irb:12:in `<main>'

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer

Peter Ehrlich picture Peter Ehrlich · Dec 30, 2012

If you're using Rails, it provides a method called #constantize that will work:

irb(main):017:0> Object.const_get 'House::Owns'
NameError: wrong constant name House::Owns

'House::Owns'.constantize
=> House::Owns

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