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Start your free trialLeonardo Escalante
3,190 PointsCode question.
I don't understand well the purpose of this two lines of code:
class TodoList
attr_reader :name, :todo_items
Please help me with that, thanks.
3 Answers
michael rode
240 PointsYou will come across attr_reader, attr_writer and attr_accessor while working with Ruby. The first line is creating a class called Todoitems. I have recreated an example of that class
class Todolist
attr_reader:name, :todo_item
def initialize(name, todo_item)
@name = name
@todo_item = todo_item
end
end
list = Todolist.new("Mike", "Shoe")
puts list.name
puts list.todo_item
You can see that I am able to call list.name and list.todo_item. This will return "mike" and "shoe" the reason I have access to these variables is because of that method. A really helpful way to break it down is to jump behind the scenes and take a look at what that method is actually doing.
class Todolist
def initialize(name, todo_item)
@name = name
@todo_item = todo_item
end
def name
@name
end
def todo_item
@todo_item
end
end
list = Todolist.new("Mike", "Shoe")
puts list.name
puts list.todo_item
This code is essentially the same as above. But instead of having to define a todo_item method and a name method we can just uset the attr_reader method instead.
Patrick Mooney
34,161 PointsIt adds getter methods for the name and todo_items member variables.
Without that line, you'd need to access them with a preceding "@" from within your class, and you wouldn't be able to access them from outside of your class, unless you added your own getter method.
Leonardo Escalante
3,190 PointsGreat explanation, thanks!