In Ruby is there a way to overload the initialize constructor?

Question

In Java you can overload constructors:

public Person(String name) {
  this.name = name;
}
public Person(String firstName, String lastName) {
   this(firstNam         


        

Answer 1

class StatementItem
  attr_reader :category, :id, :time, :amount

  def initialize(item)
    case item
    when Order
      initialize_with_order(item)
    when Transaction
      initialize_with_transaction(item)
    end
  end

  def valid?
    !(@category && @id && @time && @amount).nil?
  end

  private
    def initialize_with_order(order)
      return nil if order.status != 'completed'
      @category = 'order'
      @id = order.id
      @time = order.updated_at
      @amount = order.price
    end

    def initialize_with_transaction(transaction)
      @category = transaction.category
      @id = transaction.id
      @time = transaction.updated_at
      @amount = transaction.amount
    end

end