ruby rails 4 initialize and increment instance variables

Question

I have been tinkering with various ways to clean this up and I was wondering if it is more ideal to break this into small methods or way to accomplish this on a single line?

 def run_counters @num_attempts ||= 0 @num_attempts += retry_attempt @all_attempts ||= 0 @all_attempts += retry_limit end 

Answer 1

Either initialize the variables in your class's constructor (that's specifically what it's for!) or define accessor methods to isolate the initialization logic for each variable:

# via constructor: def initialize @num_attempts = 0 @all_attempts = 0 end def run_counters num_attempts += retry_attempt all_attempts += retry_limit end 

Or:

# via accessor methods: def run_counters num_attempts += retry_attempt all_attempts += retry_limit end def num_attempts @num_attempts ||= 0 end def all_attempts @all_attempts ||= 0 end 

This also means you may safely access num_attempts and all_attempts from any other method, and not have to duplicate the initialization logic.