Ruby Monkey Patch Class Method

The linking of a new method to the existing class method name happens at runtime.

Ruby monkey patch class method.

The above statement asserts that the ruby usage is incorrect but terms evolve and that s not always a bad thing. There s no good reason to do this sort of patching because jruby marshals strings between java and ruby. We are assigning a new method name patchfunc to the existing class method name monkeyfunc. So the behavior of the class monkey is changed dynamically.

3 aspects of this code are likely to change in the next release. When you monkey patch core classes you add to the core ruby apis. All users of the monkey patched class see the same changes. For example you often see monkey patches that simply add a convenience method that has no side effect.

You have to know where your monkey patches live. 2 monkey patched java methods are only available in ruby code. Ruby has a very beautiful syntax and so it can be tempting to monkey patch a class to turn some ugly method call into something that is more readable. In ruby a monkey patch mp is any dynamic modification to a class and is often used as a synonym for dynamically modifying any class add new or overwrite existing methods at runtime.

This can cause unintended side effects or breakage of programs. Patches go into lib core. Motivated by the intent to patch existing third party code as a workaround to a bug or feature. 42 print x bar but you can t do this for certain built in classes like int or float.

Or perhaps you need to monkey patch a class you own. Monkey patching changes the behavior of class methods. I mostly follow rails monkey patching convention. Every app with core patches feels a little bit different.

Due to ruby s open classes you can redefine or add functionality to existing classes. With that in mind let s look at a completely contrived example. This is called a monkey patch. So you have to have a way to quickly learn those changes when you jump into a new codebase.

In ruby the term monkey patch was misunderstood to mean any dynamic modification to a class and is often used as a synonym for dynamically modifying any class at runtime. Pass dummy class x foo foo bar lambda self. Unfortunately the scope of such changes is global.