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Ruby Build an Address Book in Ruby Class Design Initializing and Calling Methods

Sarah A. Morrigan
Sarah A. Morrigan
14,329 Points
Posted by Sarah A. Morrigan
Sarah A. Morrigan
14,329 Points

address = Address.new does not define variable address?

When address = Address.new is invoked it generates an empty variable address whereas the class Address is called from ./address.rb.

But somehow code challenge keeps telling me that "address" is an invalid variable.

address.rb 
class Address
  attr_accessor :kind, :street_1, :street_2, :city, :state, :postal_code

  def initialize
    @addresses = []
  end

  def add_address(kind, street_1, street_2, city, state, postal_code)
    address = Address.new
    @kind = kind or ''
    @street_1 = street_1 or ''
    @street_2 = street_2 or ''
    @city = city or ''
    @state = state  or ''
    @postal_code = postal_code or ''
  end

  def to_s(format = 'short')
    address = ''
    case format
    when 'long'
      address += street_1 + "\n"
      address += street_2 + "\n" if !street_2.nil?
      address += "#{city}, #{state} #{postal_code}"
    when 'short'
      address += "#{kind}: "
      address += street_1
      if street_2
        address += " " + street_2
      end
      address += ", #{city}, #{state}, #{postal_code}"
    end
    address
  end
end

1 Answer

William Li
PLUS
William Li
Courses Plus Student 26,865 Points
William Li
William Li
Courses Plus Student 26,865 Points

Hi, Sarah A. Morrigan

The problem is in this block of code.

def initialize
    @addresses = []
  end

The challenge is asking for

initialize a variable called address which will be a new instance of the Address class.

To initialize a new instance of class, you have to do so outside of the class definition; also, there's no need to make any change the class definition body.

class Address
  attr_accessor :kind, :street_1, :street_2, :city, :state, :postal_code

  def initialize(kind, street_1, street_2, city, state, postal_code)
    @kind = kind or ''
    @street_1 = street_1 or ''
    @street_2 = street_2 or ''
    @city = city or ''
    @state = state  or ''
    @postal_code = postal_code or ''
  end

  def to_s(format = 'short')
    address = ''
    case format
    when 'long'
      address += street_1 + "\n"
      address += street_2 + "\n" if !street_2.nil?
      address += "#{city}, #{state} #{postal_code}"
    when 'short'
      address += "#{kind}: "
      address += street_1
      if street_2
        address += " " + street_2
      end
      address += ", #{city}, #{state}, #{postal_code}"
    end
    address
  end
end

# initialize instance of  Address class with arbitrary values
address = Address.new('kind','st1','st2','city','state','zip')

Hope that helps.