You all know Symbol#to_proc, right? It allows you to write this:

# Without Symbol#to_proc
[1, 2, 3].map { |it| it.to_s }
[3, 4, 5].inject { |memo, it| memo * it }

# With Symbol#to_proc
[1, 2, 3].map(&:to_s)
[3, 4, 5].inject(&:*)

It has been in Rails as long as I can remember, and is in Ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.x. I love it to death and I use it everywhere I can.

It is actually quite simple, and you can implement it yourself:

class Symbol
  def to_proc
    Proc.new { |obj, *args| obj.send(self, *args) }
  end
end

It works because when you prepend an ampersand (&) to any Ruby object, it calls #to_proc to get a proc to use as block for the method.

What I always regretted though was not being to pass any arguments, so I hacked and monkeypatched a bit, and got:

class Symbol

  def with(*args, &block)
    @proc_arguments = { :args => args, :block => block }
    self
  end

  def to_proc
    @proc_arguments ||= {}
    args = @proc_arguments[:args] || []
    block = @proc_arguments[:block]
    @proc_arguments = nil
    Proc.new { |obj, *other| obj.send(self, *(other + args), &block) }
  end

end

So you can now write:

some_dates.map(&:strftime.with("%d-%M-%Y"))

Not that this is any shorter than just creating the darn block in the first place. But hey, it's a good exercise in metaprogramming and show of more of Ruby's awesome flexibility.

After this I remembered something similar that annoyed me before. It's that Rails helper methods are just a bag of methods available to, because they are mixed in your template. So if you have an array of numbers that you want to format as currency, you'd have to do:

<%= @prices.map { |price| number_to_currency(price) }.to_sentence %>

What if I could apply some to_proc-love to that too? All these helper methods cannot be added to strings, fixnums, and the likes; that would clutter way to much. Rather, it might by a nice idea to use procs that understands helper methods. Here is what I created:

module ProcProxyHelper

  def it(position = 1)
    ProcProxy.new(self, position)
  end

  class ProcProxy

    instance_methods.each { |m| undef_method(m) unless m.to_s =~ /^__|respond_to\?|method_missing/ }

    def initialize(object, position = 1)
      @object, @position = object, position
    end

    def to_proc
      raise "Please specify a method to be called on the object" unless @delegation
      Proc.new { |*values| @object.__send__(*@delegation[:args].dup.insert(@position, *values), &@delegation[:block]) }
    end

    def method_missing(*args, &block)
      @delegation = { :args => args, :block => block }
      self
    end

  end

end

I used a clean blank class (in Ruby 1.9, you'd want to inherit it from BasicObject), in which I will provide the proper proc-object. I play around with the argument list a bit, handling multiple arguments and blocks too. You can now use this syntax:

<%= @prices.map(&it.number_to_currency).to_sentence %>

That is a lot sexier if you as me. And you can use it in any object, not just inside views. And lets add some extra arguments and some Enumerator-love too:

class SomeClass
  include ProcProxyHelper

  def initialize(name, list)
    @name, @list = name, list
  end

  def apply(value, index, seperator)
    "#{@name}, #{index} #{separator} #{value}"
  end

  def applied_list
    @list.map.with_index(&it.apply(":"))
  end

end

In case you are wondering, the position you can specify is to tell where the arguments need to go. Position 0 is the method name, so you shouldn't use that, but any other value is okay. An example might be that you cant to wrap an array of texts into span-tags:

<%= some_texts.map(&it(2).content_tag(:span, :class => "foo")).to_sentence %>

So there you have it. I'm probably solving a problem that doesn't exist. It is however a nice example of the awesome power of Ruby. I hope you've enjoyed this little demonstration of the possible uses of to_proc.