[MacRuby-devel] Manage array of objects within object's class?

[Jeff Dyck]

Hey,

I'm working on developing an app in MacRuby that uses HTTParty to consume a Web Service.  I'm hoping someone can help me wrap my head around some of the Model - View - Controller stuff...

From reading some tutorials on MacRuby (and RubyMotion), it seems that it's best practice to have all the HTTP requests for loading, saving and querying objects as part of the model, rather than in the controller (which is what I've done in the past)...

I can wrap my head around saving and deleting objects in the Model, but wondering about loading objects - in particular when there are many objects to be loaded... If my code to load the JSON is embedded in the Model as a Class Method, can I also have a Class Array to store them?  And if so can I bind that to an NSArray Controller and use that to feed my UI?

IE: I have a class of 'sites' which is basically a list of schools in our District, and simplified looks something like: 

class Site
	require 'httparty'
	include HTTParty
	format :json
	base_uri 'http://webservice.address.here'

	attr_accessor :siteArray
	attr_accessor :siteArrayController

	PROPERTIES = [:id, :code, :name, :server, :location, :saved]
	PROPERTIES.each { |prop| attr_accessor prop }

	def self.getAllSites
		siteArray = NSMutableArray.new
    
		get('/sites').parsed_response.each do |site|
			siteArrayController.addObject(self.new(site))
		end
	end

	def initialize(attributes = {})
		attributes.each { |key, value|
			self.send((key.to_s + "=").to_s, value)
		}
        
		if @id.nil? then
			@saved = false
		else
			@saved = true
		end
	end	
end

Basically, I would like to call from the main App Delegate something like Site.getAllSites, which would talk to the Web Server, load and parse the json and init the actual objects, adding them to the siteArray, which would in turn populate the UI via Bindings.

So I guess my questions are:
1) Am I crazy trying to do it like this?
2) How do I define the siteArray and siteArrayController so that they are Class variables (rather than object variables) and can be bound to the UI?

Thanks in advance for anyone who can point me in the right direction.

Jeff
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