Ruby Classes

In Ruby, classes are instances of class Class. Since they are objects, they respond to messages sent using dot notation. Classes are special objects that have ability to spawn new objects. Classes are usually defined using class keyword with a constant as name. Classes can inherit the behavior (methods) of another class using inheritance. Ruby classes can have only one parent i.e. multiple inheritance is not allowed. You can reopen already defined classes and add methods to them.

>> class A
>>   attr_reader :answer
?>   def initialize
>>     @answer = 42
>>   end
?>   def A.foo
>>     42
>>   end
>> end
>>
?> class B < A
?> end
>> A.foo == B.foo
=> true
>> A.new.answer == B.new.answer
=> true

Since classes are instances of class Class, defining class method means defining singleton method on Class’s objects. In the above example class A is an object of class Class. A.foo defines a singleton method on object A which is called as class method. Instead of A.foo, you could also use self.foo.

Ruby allows you to create anonymous classes using Class.new. Class.new accepts a block in which you can define class and instance methods.

>> c = Class.new do
?>   def say_hello
>>     puts "Hello!"
>>   end
?>   def self.say_bye
>>     puts "Bye!"
>>   end
?> end
>> c.say_bye
Bye!
>> c.new.say_hello
Hello!

Classes have a special method initialize which is called every time a class is instantiated. It is typically used to set values of instance variables. Names of instance variables begin with @ symbol. Each object contains its own copy of instance variables which store state of the object. They can be accessed from any instance method of the class. Instance variables are private and cannot be accessed from outside of the class without getter and setter methods. Ruby provides attr_reader, attr_writter, attr_accessor and attr methods (defined in the Module class) which automagically create basic getter/setter methods. Ruby provides syntactic sugar for calling setter methods. So instead of object.attribute=(value), you can use object.attribute = value. Be careful with setter methods, they don’t return result of the last expression. Instead, they return whatever’s on right-hand side of the =. This behavior is consistent with variable assignment.

In Ruby, name of a constant begins with uppercase letter. You can assign objects to constant in the same way as variable assignment. Reassigning already assigned constant is possible but results in a warning. If you try to modify object referred by a constant, ruby doesn’t complain.

>> Constant = [1, 2, 3]
=> [1, 2, 3]
>> Constant = [1, 2, 3, 4]
(irb):25: warning: already initialized constant Constant
=> [1, 2, 3, 4]
>> Constant << 5
=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] # no warning

Constants defined in a class are accessible from class as well as instance methods of that class. From outside of the class, constants can be accessed by using double colon (::). Ex. Math::PI.

Nitish Parkar