= DeepDive Deep Contolled Cloning When you have a system of objects that have many references to each other, it becomes an issue to be able to clone properly that object graph. There may be control objects you may not want to clone, but maintain references to. And some references you may not wish to clone at all. Enter DeepDive. Allows you a means by which you can do controlled deep cloning or copying of your complex interconnected objects. == Gem Version {Gem Version}[http://badge.fury.io/rb/deep_dive] == Usage Simply include DeepDive in your base class. All classes derived will be set for deep cloning or deep duping. == Examples class FooBase include DeepDive exclude :c end Even though the instance variable @c is not defined in the base class, any instance variables with that name in the subclasses will be excluded from the deep clone or duping. It will simply use the reference to that object instead (a.k.a shallow copying) class Foo < FooBase attr_accessor :a, :b, :c, :changeme end class Bar < FooBase attr_accessor :a, :b, :c, :changeme end class FooBar < FooBase attr_accessor :a, :b, :c, :changeme, :dontcopy, :arr, :hsh, :nonddob exclude :dontcopy end class FooBlock < FooBar attr_accessor :freject, :fa, :fb, :fc, :frecur, :fexcludeme exclude { |sym, obj| sym == :@fexcludeme if obj.instance_variable_defined?(:@freject) and obj.send(:freject) } end @foo = Foo.new @bar = Bar.new @foobar = FooBar.new @foobar.arr = [@foo, @bar, @foobar, "Just a string"] @foobar.hsh = {foo: @foo, bar: @bar, foobar: @foobar, nonddob: "just a string"} @foo.a = 'foo just around' @bar.a = 'bar hanging around' @foo.b = @bar @bar.b = @foo @foo.c = @bar.c = @foobar.c = @foobar @foo.changeme = @bar.changeme = @foobar.changeme = "initial" So now if you do: nfoo = @foo.dclone @foo.c will refer to the same object as nfoo.c, but @foo.b and nfoo.b will be different, as nfoo.b will be a deep clone of @foo.b. Also, you may do: mfoo = @foo.ddup which will basically do a deep dup of @foo. Please see spec/lib/deep_dive/deep_dive_spec.rb for a more comprehensve example of the above. Better documentation will be supplied shortly. == Note Well DeepDive is expected to undergo rapid evolution until it hits 1.0.0. I will take every effort to keep the API backwards compatable until then. == Release Notes 2014-07-27 0.2.0 -- Implemented the exclusion block, made gem restrictive to Ruby 2.x and higher. == Copyright Copyright (c) 2013-2014 Fred Mitchell. See LICENSE.txt for further details.