ruby object behavior while using fog and AWS methods

Question

I have an aws_helper.rb file

require 'yaml'
require 'fog'
class Aws_Helper
  def initialize()
    conf = YAML::load_file("config.yml")
    @connection = Fog::DNS.new( :provider=> 'aws',
                         :aws_access_key_id => conf['aws_access_key'],
                         :aws_secret_access_key => conf['aws_secret_key']
                 )
     return @connetion
  end
end 

If I use the class from another file, say test.rb

require_relative 'aws_helper.rb'
connection  = Aws_Helper.new()
connection.zones.get("ZXASDFS443")
p connection

I get the error,

undefined method `zones' for # (NoMethodError)

But from aws_helper.rb file itself if I do @connection.zone.get("ZXASDFS443") this works fine.

What I am doing wrong here?

Answer 1

I think the problem comes from how initialize works in Ruby, which is a little weird. In particular, unlike most other methods, initialize ignores the return value provided. It will ALWAYS return an instance of the class it is defined upon. So in this case you would get back an Aws_Helper instance (instead of a reference to the connection itself). If you change the name of the method there to something like connect it should work the way you have laid out.