search for: nullobject

...value for an object if data is missing in the child table. For instance: class Student has_one :university end if no university is associated to the student in the database, I would like to automatically return an instance of NoUniverisity class instead of it being set to nil. Similar to the NullObject refactoring described in Fowler''s book. Any ideas? Thanks! Jay -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Dear John and others, I've been wondering about whether there's any way to indicate a "nil" reference class object, which will represent "no value", and be tested for, but not fail the internal type checking. NULL is the obvious choice (or seems so to me), but can only be used if an explicit class union is created: > Foo <- setRefClass("Foo") > Bar