Block syntax
This:
loop { ... } Causes a syntax error in MRI 2.1. This would get fix the syntax error:
loop { ... } However, the use of {...} is normally reserved for single-line blocks. Prefer:
loop do .. end Methods
Use many more methods. It should be possible to figure out what the script does, in broad strokes, by looking only at its main method. Find lines of code that do one thing and put them in their own method. For example:
def login_to_se login_form = $agent.get('https://openid.stackexchange.com/account/login').forms.first login_form.email = email login_form.password = password $agent.submit login_form, login_form.buttons.first puts 'logged in with SE openid' end ... login_to_se and so on. Your methods should, when possible, have these properties:
- The method does one thing
- The name says what it does
- All of the code in the method is at the same level of abstraction
You want code, at the higher levels such as the main loop, to look more like this:
loop do continue_on_error do login_to_se login_to_meta login_to_chat loop do copy_new_post_to_chat wait end end end A method should read like a story. Abstract away--in methods, classes, etc--details that make the story hard to follow.
Abstract out rescue, too
You may notice the call to continue_on_error above. It can be very useful to abstract out your rescue blocks, too. In this case, it gives us a method name that documents why we are doing the rescue:
def continue_on_error yield rescue => e $ERR = e p e end $ERR
We can get rid of $ERR by having #continue_on_error say that we're restarting:
def continue_on_error yield rescue => e puts e puts "Restarting" end and in the main loop, instead of:
puts $ERR ? "An unknown error occurred. Bot restarted." : "Bot initialized." simply
puts "Initialized" The script's log output will be just as clear.
