I really don't like this.. It just seems messy. So, I wrote a gem that I think solves it in a somewhat elegant way. The gem is called Unfickle and can be used like so:
The result is somewhat the same, only it's stored in a hash. This gives users the ability to iterate over that hash to find the constant they want. Example:
You can even traverse the constants using the '.each' method provided by the Hash class :D
The entire code for this gem is very simple:
The first method, 'set_const' just creates a new hash, if it doesn't exist, and adds the key/value pair to that hash. 'const_missing' is the method that retrieves the hash value based on the key passed in.
I extended the 'Forwardable' module and delegated four methods to the Hash instance created by the set_const method. This means I don't have to re-implement that.
One of the issues with this code is optimization. Using 'const_missing' means we have to go through a begin/rescue block to figure out a constant is missing. This is a performance hit. The other speed issue comes with the use of delegators. Although these two things can slow down code, I think the speed hit is negligible. If you have a better way, don't hesitate to let me know.
You can find this code on github here.
Install the gem like normal:
gem install unfickle
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