Decorators in Scale

Jackbox allows the scaling of Decorators onto the entire object. Traditionally this has been a problem for Ruby. There have been some partial solutions published by different authors, but they all fall short of the true GOF standard, posing some problems for their effective use and implementation. Here are a couple of references on the subject matter for your review: Evaluating Alternative Decorator Implementations and Decorator Pattern in Ruby.

But, with Jackbox we overcome these problems and give a new spin to this design pattern with Ruby. The Injector metaphor is the key, take a look at this code:

# our class (can be anything..., think html rendering, or string processing) class Coffee def cost 1.50 end end # our decorators trait :milk do # first decorator def cost super() + 0.30 end end trait :vanilla do # second decorator def cost super() + 0.15 end end # the coffee cup = Coffee.new.enrich(milk, vanilla, vanilla) # the list can go on.... # our tests cup.cost.should == 2.10 cup.injectors.sym_list.should == [:milk, :vanilla, :vanilla] # coffee is coffee cup.should be_instance_of(Coffee)

Multiple applications of the same decorator are a cinch, just add them to the end of the list. Class identity remains untouched, a coffee is a coffee after all. Removing a decorator can be done by calling #eject or sending Injector Directives, and most of all the code is clean and concise. For more on Injectors and their function see the main page or the project rspec files.