The Law of Demeter, or Principle of Least Knowledge is a fairly simple design pattern, which, simply put means that an object should only talk to it’s immediate “friends”
The law states that a method M of and object O may only invoke the methods of the following kind:
1. a method on O itself
2. any parameters passed to M
3. any objects instantiated within M
4. any direct components of O
The classic example coined by David Bock used a Paperboy (one object) delivering a paper, then extracting money from a Customer’s (another object) Wallet (and another):
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class Paperboy def get_payment(customer) self.money += customer.wallet.take_out(10) end end |
In the “real world” the Paperboy would ask the customer for the money who would then take it out for them, rather then the Paperboy reaching into the customer’s back pocket and getting it for themself.
Really we want something as follows:
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class Paperboy def get_payment(customer) self.money += customer.get_payment(10) end end class Customer def get_payment(amount) wallet.take_out(10) end end |
This may all seem trivial and a waste of time, but what happens if some Customers want to pay by cheque? Those decisions should have an impact on the Paperboy, otherwise we end up with:
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class Paperboy def get_payment(customer) if customer.pay_by_cash? self.money += customer.wallet.take_out(10) elsif customer.pay_by_cheque? self.money += customer.cheque_book.write_cheque(10) end end end |
Where as it makes more sense for the change to be contained within the Customer:
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class Paperboy def get_payment(customer) self.money += customer.get_payment(10) end end class Customer def get_payment(amount) if pay_by_cash? wallet.take_out(10) elsif pay_by_cheque? cheque_book.write_cheque(10) end end end |
So what does this have to do with Rails and the delegate method? The delegate method adds a quick and simple way of following the Law of Demeter without having to do very much at all.
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class Order belongs_to :customer end class Customer has_many :orders has_one :credit_card has_one :bank_account def payment_method if pay_by_card? credit_card elsif pay_by_account? bank_account end end end class CreditCard belongs_to :customer end class BankAccount belongs_to :customer end |
This setup means to get an Order’s payment we would have to say:
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@order.customer.payment_method.withdraw(amount) |
But if we simply change our objects as such:
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class Order belongs_to :customer delegate :withdraw_payment, :to => :customer end class Customer has_many :orders has_one :credit_card has_one :bank_account def withdraw_payment(amount) if pay_by_card? credit_card.withdraw(amount) elsif pay_by_account? bank_account.withdraw(amount) end end end |
Now all we have to say is:
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@order.withdraw_payment(amount) |
So at any time, the details of how a payment is to be decided can be contained with the Customer. This is of course a simplistic example, but hopefully explains how you chould be using this handy feature.