PrivateAttrReader

Allows you to do this in Class definitions that inherity from Object

class UserService
  private_attr_reader :name, :things
end

This creates private attr_readers for both stuff and things.

Why?

When using Plain Ruby Objects (PORO) I prefer to access instance attributes through attribute readers. At the same time, I do not want to expose the readers on the classes public interface. I used to do this

class UserService
  private
  attr_reader :name, :user_id
end

But I didn't like having the extra line because everything after that will be private and I prefer to have my attr_readers at the top of my class definition (once again stylistic).

So now I do this

class UserService
  private_attr_reader :name, :user_id
end

And use like this

class UserService
  private_attr_reader :name, :user_id
  
  def initialize(@name, @user_id)
    @name = name
    @user_id = user_id
  end
  
  def call
    user.update(name)
  end
  
  def user
    @user ||= User.find(user_id)
  end
end

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'private_attr_reader'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install private_attr_reader

Usage

Usage is identical to attr_reader only the methods are private

class User
  private_attr_reader :foo, :bar, :baz
end

This creates private readers for @foo, @bar and @baz

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/Austio/private_attr_reader.