TheInternet.is_a?(Hash) == true

August 14th, 2006

While convalescing from a recent surgery, I had a flash of insight. One can view the Internet and a file system as one big, really big, Hash.

What is a Hash if not a way to access a value referenced by a key ?

What is a filename ? A key.

What is a URL ? A key.

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require 'uri'
require 'open-uri'
require 'singleton'

# Access the Internet through a Hash-like interface
# Code originally written by
#     François Beausoleil (francois@teksol.info)
# This code is released in the public domain.
class TheInternet
  include Singleton

  def [](url)
    uri = url.respond_to?(:read) ? url : URI.parse(url)
    uri.read
  end

  def []=(url, value)
    # POST, PUT or whatever to URL
  end
end
 
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require 'singleton'

# Access the filesystem through a Hash-like interface
# Code originally written by
#     François Beausoleil (francois@teksol.info)
# This code is released in the public domain.
class Filesystem
  include Singleton

  def [](path)
    File.read(path)
  end

  def []=(path, value)
    File.open(path, 'wb') do |f|
      f.write(value)
      # Could do fancy stuff here:
      # YAMLize value, marshall it, etc.
    end
  end
end

The above allows us to do very interesting things:

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# Copy from the Internet to a local file:
Filesystem.instance['teksol.info/index.html'] =
  TheInternet.instance['http://blog.teksol.info/']

# Given a suitable implementation of TheInternet#[]=,
# we could do:
search_results =
  (TheInternet.instance['http://www.google.com/search'] =
    {:hl => 'en', :q => 'rails'})

Is this rambling interesting ? Certainly. Is it useful ? You tell me !

DISCLAIMER: The Filesystem object above is full of security holes. It should be implemented in a chrooted, environment, check permissions, etc.

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I am François Beausoleil, a Ruby on Rails coder. During the day, I work on XLsuite. At night, I am interested many things. Read my biography

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