Output one attribute at the time with to_str usage in Ruby

Question

Say I have a class with many attributes but need only one attribute at a time, i.e.

   class A
     attr_accessor :name
     attr_accessor :other1
     attr_accessor :other2
     attr_accessor :other3
     attr_accessor :other4
   end

And want the output of only one attribute at a time:

   a = A.new
   puts a.name.to_str

to be:

  name value of a: value_of_name

What is the best way of doing this?

Answer 1

In the A class create a to_s method. This should override the default one.

e.g.

class A
def initialize
end

def to_s
puts "Name for a: #{name}"
end

end

Answer 2

Edit:

You wouldn't consider just creating a method in the class that does this for you?

def as_string(sym)
  "value of #{sym.to_s}: #{send(sym)}"
end

Then you could use a.as_string(:attributename) to get the result you want? Otherwise you're looking for an attribute to act as an object, and doing attr_accessors aren't really the way to go..

Old Answer:

You need to override the to_s method in the class definition. Note that this is implicitly called by puts - when a method expects a string, it will automatically attempt to_s, so you don't need to.