== Summary
methodchain - ruby helpers for method chaining: tap, then, else
Easy ways to navigate around nil without creating local variables.

== Author and License
Copyright (c) 2008 Greg Weber, http://gregweber.info
Licensed under the MIT license

== Example
= tap
if you don't already know about this method, look it up on the net.  The tap included here allows message sending.

OLD WAY (still valid with this tap)
  [1].tap {|arr| arr.compact!}.first # => 1
NEW WAY
  [1].tap(:compact!).first # => 1

= #then and #else
OLD WAY
  name = person ? person.name : nil

NEW WaY
  name = person.then {|p| p.name}

not a huge savings. But sometimes the person variable is actually a function call, and then we must save it in a variable first.

OLD WAY
  location = Location.find(:first, ...)
  @phone = location && location.phone

NEW WaY
  @phone = Location.find(:first, ...).then {phone}
  here we have reduced a line of code and removed a local variable

OLD WAY
  if(customer && customer.order && customer.order.id == new_customer_id)
    'success'
  else
    'fail'
  end

NEW WaY
  customer.then {order}.then {id == new_customer_id}.then('success').else('fail')

Here we have removed one call to order and reduced the code to a one-liner.  There is also an equivalent block form
  customer.then {order}.then {id == new_customer_id}.then do |o|
    'success'
  end.else do
    'fail'
  end

== Usage
  require 'rubygems'

=== import all MethodChain methods into Object

  require 'methodchain'

=== selectively import MethodChain methods

then_else will load just the then and else methods and not the tap method

  require 'methodchain/then_else'

not_included will load the MethodChain module without including it anywhere.

  require 'methodchain/not_included'

== Implementation
a helper method called self_eval is also exposed.  This method allows the two different block forms {|p| p.name} and {name}, where the second form is called using instance_eval.

== Install
gem install methodchain

== Source
=== browser
http://github.com/gregwebs/methodchain/tree/master
=== repository
git clone git://github.com/gregwebs/methodchain.git

== Homepage
http://gregweber.info/projects/methodchain.html

== RDoc documentation
included with gem