[Rails] Formatting data drawn from a DB

[Jean-François]

Jodi :

> >>    protected
> >>    def after_find
> >>      self.phone = "#{self.phone_before_type_cast[0..2]}-#
> >> {self.phone_before_type_cast[3..6]}" if !self.phone.nil? and
> >> self.phone_before_type_cast.length == 7
> >>      self.phone = "(#{self.phone_before_type_cast[0..2]}) #
> >> {self.phone_before_type_cast[3..5]}-#{self.phone_before_type_cast
> >> [6..9]}" if !self.phone.nil? and self.phone_before_type_cast.length
> >> == 10
> >>    end
> >
> > Sorry for my arrogance, but what an ugly code !
>
> If you can enlighten, how would you ?

Some ideas :

1/ Instead of 7 calls of #phone_before_type_cast, why not using
a variable ? tmp = self.phone_before_type_cast

2/ if self.phone is nil, in both cases you don't do anything, so you
can extract this condition.

unless self.phone.nil?
  if ...
     ...
  elsif ...
    ...
  end
end

3/ then your conditions are very similar, they deal with tmp.length,
so you can use a case/when expressions.

case tmp.length
when 7
  ...
when 10
  ...
end

4/ According to your string manipulations, in fact you want to
insert hyphens in very specific positions. So one way is using
String#insert

So now you have many ways to make a cleaner and neater code !

   -- Jean-François.

--
À la renverse.