[Ruby-DBI-devel] RFC: StatementHandle#execute

[Brian C. <B.C...@po...>]

I was writing some code like this:

    s = db.prepare("select bar from foo where baz=?")
    ...
(1)
    s.execute(key) do |sth|
      result = sth.fetch
    end

Unfortunately, I discovered that it doesn't work like that - the block is
simply ignored. It also doesn't work like this:

(2)
    t = s.execute(key)
    result = t.fetch

After some poking around, it turns out that when you run 'execute' on a
StatementHandle it returns an empty DBI::Row object. You have to do:

(3)
    s.execute(key)
    result = s.fetch

I think it would be nice to support the block format as in (1), which I
think would only need 'yield self if block_given?' in the execute method.

I think it would also be nice to return self rather than the empty DBI::Row,
so that you can chain execute with other operations:

    result = s.execute(key).fetch

What does anyone else think? It ought to be a simple change (the attached
patch is untested though, as I need my app to work with the current API
anyway)

Regards,

Brian.

--- dbi.rb.orig Mon Mar 31 15:04:37 2003
+++ dbi.rb      Mon Mar 31 15:05:23 2003
@@ -747,6 +747,11 @@
     #if @row.nil?
       @row = DBI::Row.new(column_names,nil)
     #end
+    if block_given?
+      yield self
+    else
+      self
+    end
   end
 
   def finish