ATypes (Advanced Data Types)

This gem provides some convenience methods to Ruby's basic data types which are not present in ActiveSupport and especially offers some valuable Boolean interpretation to Ruby's data types.

The gem comes in two flavors:

• core extensions, for those who prefer the handier addition of methods and are sure they won't collide with others in their projects.
• decorators, for those who prefer to use the decorator pattern and prefer to be really prudent about possible collisions in their project (i.e. because they already use ActiveSupport and don't to risk it on version updates)

You may also load both flavors, if you like, they don't collide.

Why another gem for advanced types?

While this gem has been inspired by others, like the boolean gem, these gems either have not been updated for a very long time, don't go far enough or simply don't behave really consistent in what they try to achieve.

Additionally, they often only provide logic for a single data type, which tends to bloat one's Gemfile. Therefore, this gem unites different ideas, but allow you to only load what you really want to use. See the only take what you need section.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'a_types'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install a_types

Only take what you need

Similar to ActiveSupport, you won't get anything from simply requiring the gem in your code.

  require 'a_types'

You have to specify which parts you wish to include in your project. Let's assume you prefer the core extensions, then you may use following lines:

  require 'a_types/core_ext/boolean'      # => loads Boolean extensions
  require 'a_types/core_ext/enumerable'   # => loads Enumarable extensions
  require 'a_types/core_ext/all'          # => loads all core extentions

You are more the decorator kind? This gem has exactly what you want:

  require 'a_types/decorators/boolean'    # => loads ATypes::Boolean decorator
  require 'a_types/decorators/array'      # => loads ATypes::Array decorator
  require 'a_types/decorators/all'        # => loads all available decorators

You may also simply load everything in the gem, getting the core extension AND the decorators:

  require 'a_types/all'

Feel free to browse the list of files which you may require on the project's homepage.

You may also find the documentation of each file there or on rubygems.org.

Examples

Core extension

Loading the boolean extension will provide a #to_bool to any object.

  require 'a_types/core_ext/boolean'

  'yes'.to_bool             # => true
  'not positive'.to_bool!   # => false
  -1.to_bool                # => false
   3.to_bool                # => true

Decorators

Loading the boolean decorator instead will provide a Boolean decorator class. It provides an interpretation of truth to any provided object, preserving its original behavior by delegation, as well.

  require 'a_types/decorators/boolean'

  b = ATypes::Boolean.new('yes')
  b.content       # => 'yes'
  b.size          # => 3

  b.to_bool       # => true
  b.true?         # => true
  b.truthy?       # => true

  b2 = ATypes::Boolean.new('false')
  b2.to_bool      # => false
  b2.true?        # => falsse
  b3.truthy?      # => true
  b2.falsey?      # => false   

  bnil = ATypes::Boolean.new(nil)
  bnil.to_bool    # => false
  bnil.true?      # => false
  bnil.truthy?    # => false
  bnil.falsey?    # => true

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/Dervol03/a_types.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.