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Ruby Ruby Objects and Classes Build a Bank Account Class Part 3: Keeping Our Balance

4Ctech Admin
4Ctech Admin
5,062 Points
Posted by 4Ctech Admin
4Ctech Admin
5,062 Points

Question about balance method

Is it better to create the balance method or to simply update the balance as we add each transaction?

1 Answer

J Scott Erickson
J Scott Erickson
11,883 Points
J Scott Erickson
J Scott Erickson
11,883 Points

I would have the actions ( deposit / withdraw ) update the balance themselves. Although you could have a method like so.

def balance( amount, action )
  case action
  when 'deposit'
    @balance = @balance + amount
  when 'withdraw'
    @balance = @balance - amount
  end
end

This is a pretty rudimentary implementation. There would be all sorts of things you might want to do here like validate that amount is a fixnum with two decimals, make sure that 'action' is either withdraw or deposit.