Intinno Blog

Coming from C language paradigm to ruby, unless might seem just the “awesome” feature which was missing in C.

Here are some examples highlighting the beauty:

1. When used as a Statement modifier

raise InvalidData unless AllowedDatum.include?(data)

looks much better than

raise InvalidData if !AllowedDatum.include?(data)

2. When used without else

unless condition
  #code block
end

looks much better than

if !condition
  #code block
end

However the problem with using unless starts when we have the following two cases

3. using unless with else

unless condition
  #code block 1
else
  #code block 2
end

is difficult to understand than

if condition
  #code block 2
else
  #code block 3
end

4. Concatenation of conditions

unless condition_1 || condition_2

has to be always deciphered into

if !condition_1 && !condition_2

to get a feeling of whats happening

However using !condition takes the beauty out of your code. For example

if !element.nil? && !allowedParams.include?(element)

is not as beautiful and readable as

elem.call_method unless elem.blank?

To solve the above problem we at intinno have a following mixin defined:

class Object
  def not_nil?
    !nil?
  end

  def not_blank?
    !blank?
  end

  def not_eql?(value)
    !eql?(value)
  end

  def not_empty?
    !empty?
  end

  def not_included?
    !included?
  end
end

An example of using the above mixin is

if element.not_nil? && allowedParams.doesnt_include?(element)

Now our code looks like Angelina Jolie and is as readable as any of Chetan Bhaghat’s novels.