til/ruby/make-a-long-string-of-text-readable.md

Make A Long String Of Text Readable

I have a paragraph of text that interpolates a couple user-specific values before being included in an API request. Because it is being passed to an API, it is a single-line string value. However, in the editor it is hard to read like that because it overflows way past the edge of the viewport.

description = "This is the description we need to provide for #{user.name} as part of an API request dealing with compliance and registration for a service. If you need to contact them, their email is #{user.email}."

I'd rather make this easier on myself and others to read from the editor while still being able to submit a single-line string to the API. That can be accomplished with a heredoc and some combination or gsub, strip, and squish.

If we are in a strictly Ruby-only context, we can use gsub and strip to collapse line breaks and remove surrounding white space.

description = <<~MSG.gsub(/\s+/, ' ').strip
  This is the description we need to provide for #{user.name} as part
  of an API request dealing with compliance and registration for a
  service. If you need to contact them, their email is #{user.email}.
MSG
#=> "This is the description we need to provide for #{user.name} as part of an API request dealing with compliance and registration for a service. If you need to contact them, their email is #{user.email}."

Or in a Rails context, I can instead just use squish:

description = <<~MSG.squish
  This is the description we need to provide for #{user.name} as part
  of an API request dealing with compliance and registration for a
  service. If you need to contact them, their email is #{user.email}.
MSG
#=> "This is the description we need to provide for #{user.name} as part of an API request dealing with compliance and registration for a service. If you need to contact them, their email is #{user.email}."