Create an object of a type (class) stored in a string

So, you have a class of object stored in a string, and you want to create an object of that class. You cannot assign a type of an object directly (by say @myvar.class = xxx), and the class conversions are limited to the basic built-in classes like to_s, etc. But you can use this trick:

@classtype = "Artist"
@myvar = Kernel.const_get(@classtype).find(@id)

Another (quite similar) option is to use the Rails constantize method (that in turn uses const_get). This is how for example acts_as_commentable plugin can provide a method to get the commentable object back by passing the type and id of it:

  def self.find_commentable(commentable_str, commentable_id)
    commentable_str.constantize.find(commentable_id)
  end

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