Ruby - remove inherited methods - ruby

Is it possible to remove some of the inherited methods in Ruby? I mean, I can override it, but is there any other way?
Class ABC
end
a = ABC.new
puts a.id
Here, the method id is inherited from Object along with other methods like tap,class,type etc. I want to remove such methods.
Edit: I'm using Ruby 1.8.7

Yes - undef_method :foo will prevent any calls to the method foo (contrasted with remove_method :foo, which removes the method from the child, but still passes through up the inheritance chain).
Once again, though, why do you want to remove things like id?

You can always create a blank slate class to derive from:
class BlankSlate
instance_methods.each do |m|
undef_method(m) unless (m.match(/^__/))
end
end
This should strip out all methods except for the internal ones that you're not supposed to mess with, like __send__.

As tadman said you can make a BlankSlate object, or in ruby 1.9, there is the BasicObject class that has a bare minimum of methods. A quick google search turned up this for further reading: http://www.humbug.in/docs/ruby-best-practices/I_sect13_d1e2654.html
It appears that Rails already has BlankSlate built in: http://rubydoc.info/docs/rails/2.3.8/BlankSlate

Related

Using the Class itself as a Method

Today I came across the Pathname class in Ruby and noticed that you could directly call the class itself as a method (which would basically return a new instance):
Pathname("some/path")
# => #<Pathname:some/path>
I've been trying to replicate the same thing with my CustomClass but haven't been successful. I don't know what these methods are called and I can't find any Ruby code that gives me an idea on how to do this. My Question is how do I use the Class name as method?
Things I've tried so far:
Defining self.self()
Defining self.class()
Using the class << self syntax
Googling - But it just returns comparisons of class methods vs instance methods
This isn't using the class itself. This is calling a method in Kernel with the same name as the class. It's generally discouraged to do it yourself as you pollute almost all objects with new methods and leads to confusion (as you already see).
Here is the documentation for the method. There are a few others like Array, Hash, String, etc.
What you're looking for is a conversion method to coerce the input to the instance of the class.
It is not a method of the class itself, but a method in Kernel module. So in order to be able to use the form of MyClass(value) you should add the method to Kernel module:
module Kernel
def Foo(value)
# you can implement any logic here
value.is_a?(Foo) ? value : Foo.new(value)
end
module_function :Foo
end
class Foo
def initialize(bar)
#bar = bar
end
end
baz = Foo('bar')
#=> #<Foo:0x007fd4e5070370 #bar="bar">
Foo(baz)
#=> #<Foo:0x007fd4e5070370 #bar="bar">
baz == Foo(baz)
#=> true
This is not a class call, but a shortcut. And the trickiest part - it was defined for a Kernel module to be available everywhere in the form as you just specified.
Please proceed to the link of the official docs. There you can see, that requiring a Pathname module, it extend Kernel module to add the method of the same name.
To be honest, I strongly recommend against extending Kernel with your own method. Or at least to use refinements

What if objects can print themselves in Ruby? [Object#print]

I was thinking wouldn't it be cool to have a print method defined in the Ruby Object class? Consider the following:
class Object
def print
puts self.to_s
end
end
23.times &:print
Is there any issue in having something like this? Seems like a good feature to have. It also appears easy to read.
There's already Object#inspect defined. Plus, there's already Kernel#print defined as private method in Object class and every class that inherits from it.
This method already exists in the Ruby standard library. However, it has a different name: display.
23.times &:display
# 012345678910111213141516171819202122
As you can see, it does not write a newline after the object's string representation; it is ill-suited for object inspection.
The main issue with adding methods to Object is that they become universal and may clash with similarly named methods in other libraries or in your project.
There are already multiple simple ways to output data or convert to string form in Ruby core, so the risk of a clash (on a very useful method name) likely outweighs any benefits from nicer syntax even in your own code.
If you have a smaller set of classes in your own project, where you feel this would be a useful feature to have, then this is an ideal use case for mix-ins.
Define a module:
module CanPrintSelf
def print
puts self.to_s
end
end
And include it in any class you want to have the feature:
class MyClass
include CanPrintSelf
end
my_object = MyClass.new
my_object.print
So you can have this feature if you like it, and you don't need to modify Object.

In how many ways can methods be added to a ruby object?

When it comes to run time introspection and dynamic code generation I don't think ruby has any rivals except possibly for some lisp dialects. The other day I was doing some code exercise to explore ruby's dynamic facilities and I started to wonder about ways of adding methods to existing objects. Here are 3 ways I could think of:
obj = Object.new
# add a method directly
def obj.new_method
...
end
# add a method indirectly with the singleton class
class << obj
def new_method
...
end
end
# add a method by opening up the class
obj.class.class_eval do
def new_method
...
end
end
This is just the tip of the iceberg because I still haven't explored various combinations of instance_eval, module_eval and define_method. Is there an online/offline resource where I can find out more about such dynamic tricks?
Ruby Metaprogramming seems to be a good resource. (And, linked from there, The Book of Ruby.)
If obj has a superclass, you can add methods to obj from the superclass using define_method (API) as you mentioned. If you ever look at the Rails source code, you'll notice that they do this quite a bit.
Also while this isn't exactly what you're asking for, you can easily give the impression of creating an almost infinite number of methods dynamically by using method_missing:
def method_missing(name, *args)
string_name = name.to_s
return super unless string_name =~ /^expected_\w+/
# otherwise do something as if you have a method called expected_name
end
Adding that to your class will allow it to respond to any method call which looks like
#instance.expected_something
I like the book Metaprogramming Ruby which is published by the publishers of the pickaxe book.

Ruby methods without class?

Hey everyone! I was wondering how the methods in Ruby that aren't called with the syntax ClassName.method_name work. Some off the top of my head are puts, print, gets, chomp. These methods can be called without using the dot operator. Why is this? Where do they come from? And how can I see the full list of such methods?
All methods in Kernel will be available to all objects of class Object or any class derived from Object. You can use Kernel.instance_methods to list them.
They come from the Kernel module that is automatically included for each class. Those
irb(main):001:0> class Foo
irb(main):002:1> end
=> nil
irb(main):003:0> Foo.included_modules
=> [Kernel]

Does ruby provide a method to show the hierarchy calls?

That's all, i want to see what are the clases that inherits a fixed class. There is a method for this in Ruby?
Aptana offers an option that shows this, but is there any method?
Thanks
Are you asking to see all the ancestors of a class, or the descendants? For ancestors, use:
Class.ancestors
There is no comparable method "out of the box" for descendants, however. You can use ObjectSpace, as below, but it's slow and may not be portable across Ruby implementations:
ObjectSpace.each_object(Class) do |klass|
p klass if klass < StandardError
end
EDIT:
One can also use the Class#inherited hook to track subclassing. This won't catch any subclasses created before the tracking functionality is defined, however, so it may not fit your use case. If you need to use that information programmatically on classes defined inside your application, however, this may be the way to go.
Module#ancestors
Example:
class Foo
end
class Bar < Foo
end
Bar.ancestors # => [Bar, Foo, Object, Kernel]

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