My two cents on what widget.versions.last.next_version should return.

[joshuapinter]

Awesome gem Andy.

Just reading through and noticed your call for opinions: "As an aside, I'm undecided about whether widget.versions.last.next_version should return nil or self (i.e. widget). Let me know if you have a view."

I would say return self, or widget, when this happens. That seems more intuitive, even if it masks an "incorrect" action.

Cheers,

Josh

[airblade]

Thanks for the feedback, Josh. Much appreciated!

[ndbroadbent]

Hi, just my 2c - I would personally vote for nil, since I imagine using it as a test to see if there are any further versions.
It would be especially useful when building a UI to browse versions.

I could imagine writing an ERb view like this:

<% if version.next_version %>
   <%= link_to "Next version", url_for_version(version.next_version) %>
<% else %>
   <p>This is the current version.</p>
<% end %>

Cheers

[joshuapinter]

Good point ndbroadbent. I could see it being used like that as well but you're really asking a question at that point. How about something like:

<% if version.next_version? %>

[ndbroadbent]

That's true, it's more of a question. In that case, I would prefer the inverse:

<% unless version.current? %>

I don't know if that resolves it though... My gut feeling is still telling me that it might be better to debug an undefined method for nil:NilClass, than for that same bug to go unnoticed.

[joshuapinter]

I'm convinced. I think return nil would be the safest bet.

Adding a current? or latest? would be fantastic as well.

[mckramer]

Isn't that what live? does already?

[hazah]

Semantically, the live object represents the very last version of that object. It is the "Live Version".

[batter]

Hey guys, I know I'm a little late to the conversation, but I agree with what @hazah said, and in the latest release (2.7.1), I altered the next_version method so that it will return the self (the live version).

If you want to know whether the object returned by next_version is actually the live version or not you can just use: widget.next_version.live?.

See #200 for my rationale, as well as the commit where the change was made. If someone has strong objections to this, we can revisit this, but I truly feel that the live version should be considered a version, and as such should not be ignored by the next_version method.