Probably

Probably is an extremely lightweight and simple tool. It only exists for one reason: to avoid checking for nil or exception in a calls chain. So, instead of writing like this:

visitors.most_recent.try(:last).first_name || "NoSuchAnUser"

you write like this

visitors.probably.most_recent.last.first_name.or("NoSuchAnUser")

or in a more natural way:

probably(visitors).most_recent.last.first_name.or("NoSuchAnUser")

Install

gem install probably

or in your Gemfile:

gem "probably"

or like this

gem "probably", :git => "git://github.com/zeninpalm/probably.git"

Usage

The simplest scenario

class Statistics
  include Probably
  attr_reader :visitors

  def latest_visitor
    probably(visitors).most_recent.last.first_name.or("NoSuchAnUser")
  end
end

end

or

class Foo
  include Probably
  
  def bar
    probably(nil).some_message.or { 5 / 0 }
  end
end

you many want to check probably_spec.rb for more examples, they are quite simple and intutive!