= Ruby Facets

"ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO RUBY"


== Introduction

Ruby Facets is the premiere collection of general purpose method
extensions and standard additions for the Ruby programming language.

Facets houses the largest single collection of methods available for
extending the core capabilities of Ruby's built-in classes and modules.
This collection of extension methods are unique by virtue of their atomicity.
The methods are stored in individual files so that each can be required
independently. This gives developers the potential for much finer control over
which extra methods to bring into their code.

In addition Facets provides a collection of extensions to Ruby standard library
plus a small collection of add-on classes and modules. Together these
libraries constitute an reliable source of reusable components, suitable
to a wide variety of usecases.


== Resources

* Homepage: http://rubyworks.github.com/facets
* Report Bugs: http://github.com/rubyworks/facets/issues
* Mailing List: http://groups.google.com/group/facets-universal/topics
* Wiki Pages: http://wiki.github.com/rubyworks/facets
* Source Code: http://github.com/rubyworks/facets


== Documentation

Facets has special documentation needs due to it's extensive bredth.
The documentation generated when installing via RubyGems, or the YARD
docs provided by rubydoc.info can be somewhat unweildly because it
combines all of Facets in one large set. When using these resources,
it is important to remain aware of the source location of particular
methods.

For better organized online documentation, generated to separate core
extensions from standard libraries, see the {Learn Facets}[http://rubyworks.github.com/facets/learn.html] page
on the website for links to available documentation.


== Installation

=== RubyGems

The easiest way to install is via RubyGems.

  $ gem install facets

=== Setup.rb

Facets can be installed the old-fashioned way using Ruby Setup (http://rubyworks.github.com/setup).
Download and unpack the .tar.gz package and run setup.rb, like so:

  $ tar -xvzf facets-2.x.x.tar.gz
  $ cd facets-2.x.x
  $ sudo setup.rb

Facets 2.8+ requires Ruby 1.8.7 or higher.


== Mission

Facets holds to the notion that the more we can *reasonably* integrate into
a common foundation, directed toward general needs, the better that foundation
will be able to serve the community. There are a number of advantages here:

* Better Code-reuse
* Collaborative Improvements
* Greater Name Consistency
* One-stop Shop and Installation


== Usage

=== CORE Library

At the heart of Ruby Facets is the CORE extensions library. CORE provides
a sizable collection of generally useful methods, along with a few supporting
classes, that extend the functionality of Ruby's core classes and modules.

With the exception of a few *uncommon* extensions, CORE contains anything that
will load automatically when issuing:

  require 'facets'

This loads all the CORE functionality at once. If you plan to use more then a
handful of Facets core methods it is recommended that you require the library in
this way. However, you can also "cherry pick" the CORE library as you prefer.
And for uncommon extensions this must be done. The general require statement for
a core extension library is:

  require 'facets/<class|module>/<method>'

For example:

  require 'facets/time/stamp'

Most "atoms" contain only one method, but exceptions occur when methods
are closely tied together.

You can load per-class or per-module groups of core methods by requiring the
class or module by name. For example"

  require 'facets/time'

Will require all the core Time method extensions.

Note that some methods that were part of CORE in 1.8 and earlier are now part
of MORE libraries. A good example is 'random.rb'. There were separated because
they had more specialized use cases, where as CORE extensions are intended as
general purpose.

==== Method File Names

Operator method redirect files are stored using English names. For instance 
`Proc#*` is `proc/op_mul`.

For reference, here is the chart.

     +@   => op_plus
     -@   => op_minus
     +    => op_add
     -    => op_sub
     **   => op_pow
     *    => op_mul
     /    => op_div
     %    => op_mod
     ~    => op_tilde
     <=>  => op_cmp
     <<   => op_lshift
     >>   => op_rshift
     <    => op_lt
     >    => op_gt
     ===  => op_case
     ==   => op_equal
     =~   => op_apply
     <=   => op_lt_eq
     >=   => op_gt_eq
     |    => op_or
     &    => op_and
     ^    => op_xor
     []=  => op_store
     []   => op_fetch

Facets simply takes the '*' and translates it into a string acceptable to all
file systems. Also, if a method ends in '=', '?' or '!' it is simply removed.


=== MORE Library (aka Standard Library)

On top of the extensive CORE library, Facets provides extensions for Ruby's
standard library, as well as very small collection of additional modules and
classes to supplement it.

Use this library like you would any other 3rd party library.
The only difference between Facet's Standard library and other libraries
is the lack of any enclosing @Facets::@ namespace. This is becuase
the libraries provided by Facets are fairly low-level and very general 
purpose.

When using Facets extended versions of Ruby's standard libraries,
the libraries have to loaded manually, of course. However you
do not need to load Ruby's library first, as the Facets' library
will do that automatically.

For example, normally one load Ruby's OpenStruct class via:

  require 'ostruct'

To load 'ostruct.rb' plus Facets extensions for it simply use:

  require 'facets/ostruct'

For details pertaining to the functionality of each feature,
please see the API documentation.


== Contribute

This project thrives on contribution!

If you have any extension methods, classes or modules that you think have
very general applicability and would like to see them included in
this project, don't hesitiate to submit. Also, if you have better versions
of any thing already included or simply have a patch, they are more than
welcome. We want Ruby Facets to be of the highest quality.


== Authors

This collection was put together by, and largely written by Trans. He can be
reached via email at transfire at gmail.com.

Some parts of this collection were written and/or inspired by other persons.
Fortunately nearly all were copyrighted under the same open license, the Ruby
License, or the more liberal BSD and MIT licenses. In the one or two exceptions
I have included the copyright notice with the source code. Any code file not
specifically labeled othewise shall fall under the Ruby License.

In all cases, I have made every effort to give credit where credit is due.
You will find these acknowledgments embedded in the source code. You can see
them in "CREDIT:" and/or "@author" lines. 

Also see the {Contibutors page}[https://github.com/rubyworks/facets/wiki/Contributors]
on the Wiki for a list of all contributing Rubyists. If anyone is missing from
the list, please let me know and I will correct right away. Thanks.


== License

The collection PER COLLECTION is licensed as follows:

  Ruby Facets
  Copyright (c) 2004,2010 Rubyworks

  Distributed under the terms of the Ruby license.

The Ruby license is a dual license that also provides for use of the GPL.
Complete texts of both licenses accompany this document (see LICENSE).

Acknowledgments and Copyrights for particular snippets of borrowed code
are given in their respective source. All licenses are either compatible
with the Ruby license or the original author has given permission for
inclusion of their code under such license.


"ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO RUBY!"

Ruby Facets, Copyright (c)2005,2011 Rubyworks

Do you Ruby? (http://ruby-lang.org)

