I'm building a web API with Ruby and Grape. I have two classes that requires each other which leads to a situation where I get uninitialized constant class errors. The place where I get the error is in the Entity class for Connector, see the example code below, which requires Card::Entity before it has been inintialized. Is there any way to solve this probelm without moving the Entity definitions to another file?
#card.rb
require_relative 'connector'
require_relative 'caption'
class Card < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :medium
belongs_to :storyline
has_many :connectors, autosave: true
has_many :connected_cards, class_name: "Connector", foreign_key: "connected_card_id"
has_many :captions
accepts_nested_attributes_for :connectors, :captions
class Entity < Grape::Entity
expose :id, documentation: { readonly: true }
expose :cardtype
expose :connectors, using: Connector::Entity
expose :captions, using: Caption::Entity
end
end
#connector.rb
require_relative 'card'
class Connector < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :card
has_one :connected_card, :class_name => "Card", :foreign_key => "connected_card_id"
class Entity < Grape::Entity
expose :id, documentation: { readonly: true }
expose :title
expose :card, using: Card::Entity
expose :connected_card, using: Card::Entity
end
end
I don't know a lot about grape, but this could be solved by "pre declaring" the class:
#card.rb
require_relative 'caption'
class Connector < ActiveRecord::Base
# empty declaration just to make the import works
end
class Card < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :medium
belongs_to :storyline
has_many :connectors, autosave: true
has_many :connected_cards, class_name: "Connector", foreign_key: "connected_card_id"
has_many :captions
accepts_nested_attributes_for :connectors, :captions
...
end
Still, I think that QPaysTaxes may have a valid point about design here.