Tips & Gotchas

In a few short pages we have covered a lot of ground, but really we have only scratched the surface of what Ruby2JS can do. These pages make it look easy, but there are a few things to watch out for.

• Parenthesis

  There is a fundamental mismatch between the Ruby and JavaScript object models. In Ruby, classes have methods, some of which may be attribute accessors. In JavaScript, classes have properties, some of which may be functions. This makes it impossible to distinguish between calls to methods with zero arguments and property accesses. Following Ruby’s model (everything is a method call) would make it impossible to acccess JavaScript properties. Following JavaScript’s model of everything is a property would make it impossible to call a method with zero arguments.

  Ruby2JS solves this by detecting the use of parenthesis to distinguish between these two cases. First, the rules of thumb, and then some of the significant exceptions:

  • Always use parenthesis on method definitions when there are zero arguments.
  • Always use parenthesis on method calls when there are zero arguments.
  • Never use parenthesis on definitions of attribute reader / property getters.

  If you follow these rules, you will never have a problem. All but the last example (Content Loader) followed these rules.

  The lack of strong typing in both Ruby and JavaScript makes exceptions difficult as type inferencing will only get you so far. The one exception is the value of this / self within the definition of classes, the type of which is always very much known.

  If you are careful on your method and accesssor definitions, then references to these methods and attributes within the class can be determined at compile time, enabling the omission of parenthesis in intra-class calls even when there are no arguments.

  It just so happens that Stimulus hits this sweet spot as every definition is a class.

• Returns

  In Ruby, every statement is an expression and returns a value. The return statement at the end of a method is therefore optional. This is not the case with JavaScript. There are a few cases (attribute readers being an obvious example), where the need for a return statement can be inferred and is inserted automatically by Ruby2JS, but in general, if you define a method and want to return a value, you need a return statement.

  This is not much of a problem for Stimulus as neither lifecycle methods nor actions are expected to return a result.

  One solution that may be a bit of overkill: the return filter that adds a return statement to every method defintion. This generally is harmless, but may make the generated code marginally bigger and marginally less readable.

• Explore!

  In Stiumuls, everything is a class. Classes in both Ruby and JavaScript have inheritance hierarchies, are open, can have mixins by including modules, etc. The require filter can help by turning Ruby require statements into JavaScript import statements.

Got questions or comments? Join the community!