Skip Undefined

The initializer uses special constant Dry::Initializer::UNDEFINED to distinguish variables that are set to nil from those that are not set at all.

When no value was provided, the constant is assigned to a variable, but hidden in a reader.

require 'dry-initializer'

class User
  extend Dry::Initializer
  option :email, optional: true
end

user = User.new

user.email
# => nil

user.instance_variable_get :@email
# => Dry::Initializer::UNDEFINED

This gives you full control of the real state of the attributes. However, all that checks cost about >30% of instantiation time, and make attribute readers 2 times slower.

To avoid the overhead in cases you don't care about the differences between nil and undefined, you can use a light version of the module. Add [undefined: false] config to either extend or include line of code:

extend Dry::Initializer[undefined: false]

include Dry::Initializer[undefined: false].define -> do
  # ...
end

This time you should expect nil every time no value was given to an optional attribute:

require 'dry-initializer'

class User
  extend Dry::Initializer[undefined: false]
  option :email, optional: true
end

user = User.new

user.email
# => nil

user.instance_variable_get :@email
# => nil

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