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End of Life Ruby 3.1 has reached end of life and gets no more fixes. Switch to Ruby 4.0 →

class · Ruby 3.1

Delegator

< BasicObject 17 instance methods 1 class methods

This library provides three different ways to delegate method calls to an object. The easiest to use is SimpleDelegator. Pass an object to the constructor and all methods supported by the object will be delegated. This object can be changed later.

Going a step further, the top level DelegateClass method allows you to easily setup delegation through class inheritance. This is considerably more flexible and thus probably the most common use for this library.

Finally, if you need full control over the delegation scheme, you can inherit from the abstract class Delegator and customize as needed. (If you find yourself needing this control, have a look at Forwardable which is also in the standard library. It may suit your needs better.)

SimpleDelegator’s implementation serves as a nice example of the use of Delegator:

Example
require 'delegate'

class SimpleDelegator < Delegator
  def __getobj__
    @delegate_sd_obj # return object we are delegating to, required
  end

  def __setobj__(obj)
    @delegate_sd_obj = obj # change delegation object,
                           # a feature we're providing
  end
end

Notes

Be advised, RDoc will not detect delegated methods.

Class methods 1

Instance methods 17

Constants
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