I'm using http://github.com/geekq/workflow to provide a state machine. I'm using ActiveRecord to save state, which means I have a "workflow_state" attribute in the model. I think I want a named_scope for each event in the state machine, so I can find all objects in a given state. For example, assuming a very simple state machine:
workflow do
state :new do
event :time_passes, :transitions_to => :old
end
state :old do
event :death_arrives, :transitions_to => :dead
end
state :dead
end
I want named scopes for each state. However, that's not DRY... What I want to end up with is something like:
named_scope :new, :conditions => ['workflow_state = ?', 'new']
named_scope :old, :conditions => ['workflow_state = ?', 'old']
named_scope :dead, :conditions => ['workflow_state = ?', 'dead']
But with a few lines that don't depend on the current list of states.
I can see that Model#workflow_spec.states.keys gives me each state. But what I think I need is a wierd lambda where the name of the scope is a variable. And I have no idea how to do that. At all. Been staring at this for hours and playing with irb, but I think there's a piece of knowledge about metaprogramming that I just don't have. Help, please!
Lucas, below, gives the answer - but we also need to change a symbol to a string:
workflow_spec.states.keys.each do |state|
named_scope state, :conditions => ['workflow_state = ?', state.to_s]
end