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Victor Hazbun
Victor Hazbun

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Refactoring towards decorators in Rails

#ruby #refactor

Decorators

They wrap an object and extend its functionality without modifying the object itself.

The problem

Say you have the following view.

 <p>Name: <%= @company.name.titleize %></p> <p>Email: <%= @company.email_private? 'Private' : @company.email %></p> <p>Sign Up At: <%= @company.sign_up_at.strftime('%d. %m. %Y.') %></p>
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It's bad because the view should not care about how to display the data, it should just display it.

The Decorator object 

class CompanyDecorator < SimpleDelegator def display_name name.titleize end def protected_email return "Private" if email_private? email end def formatted_sign_up_at sign_up_at.strftime("%d %b %Y") end end
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The implementation

Nice, let's see how the controller looks now.

class CompanyController < ApplicationController def show company = Company.find(params[:id]) @decorated_company = CompanyDecorator.new(company) end end
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Now, the view

 <p>Name: <%= @decorated_company.display_name %></p> <p>Email: <%= @decorated_company.protected_email %></p> <p>Birthday: <%= @decorated_company.formatted_sign_up_at %></p>
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Final thoughts

Not only looks better, testing this approach is much simpler.

This does not only applies for Rails apps, this pattern could be used anywhere in Ruby.

Top comments (1)

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fernandomaia profile image
Fernando Maia •

Nice and clean solution. Awesome!