Ruby, a message to you

It finally happened. I figured out how to get GuessMethod (particularly the GuessConstant half of things) and Rails to behave. There’s still a little kludginess to it, but they can work magic together:

mvb:~/rails/depot cms$ script/console
Loading development environment.
>> require 'guessmethod'
=> ["GuessMethod", "GuessConstant", "GuessMethodOptions", "GuessMethodGuesser", "GuessMethodOutputter"]
>> LineItm.find(:first)
no constant in threshold: for LineItm, sending to Object's const_missing
NameError: uninitialized constant LineItm
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.4.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:266:in `load_missing_constant'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.4.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:452:in `const_missing'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.4.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:464:in `unguessed_const_missing'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/guessmethod-0.1.0/lib/guessmethod.rb:87:in `const_missing'
        from (irb):2
>> LineItem
=> LineItem
>> LineItm.find(:first)
attention: replacing non-existant constant LineItm with LineItem for Object
=> #<LineItem:0x30c1338 @attributes={"order_id"=>"1", "total_price"=>"3", "quantity"=>"1", "product_id"=>"8", "id"=>"1"}>

Once Rails loads a constant GuessConstant can find it, and your poor typing stops holding you back.

There’s just one thing (there’s always just one thing). Things don’t go very well if you require GuessMethod in your irbrc. You have to require it manually in the console. It works fine when script/server gets a hold of it, but not for script/console. I suppose they load everything in a different order (but this isn’t something I’ve looked into yet). Rails has to show up to the dance first.

It was this old Dr. Nic post that got me over the hurdle solving this one. Thanks Dr. Nic.

sudo gem install guessmethod

Enjoy!