Private module methods in Ruby

Daniel Beardsley picture Daniel Beardsley · Nov 25, 2008 · Viewed 82.1k times · Source

I have a two part question

Best-Practice

  • I have an algorithm that performs some operation on a data structure using the public interface
  • It is currently a module with numerous static methods, all private except for the one public interface method.
  • There is one instance variable that needs to be shared among all the methods.

These are the options I can see, which is the best?:

  • Module with static ('module' in ruby) methods
  • Class with static methods
  • Mixin module for inclusion into the data structure
  • Refactor out the part of the algorithm that modifies that data structure (very small) and make that a mixin that calls the static methods of the algorithm module

Technical part

Is there any way to make a private Module method?

module Thing
  def self.pub; puts "Public method"; end
  private
  def self.priv; puts "Private method"; end
end

The private in there doesn't seem to have any effect, I can still call Thing.priv without issue.

Answer

ucron picture ucron · Jan 8, 2009

I think the best way (and mostly how existing libs are written) to do this is by creating a class within the module that deals with all the logic, and the module just provides a convenient method, e.g.

module GTranslate
  class Translator
    def perform( text ); translate( text ); end

    private

    def translate( text )
      # do some private stuff here
    end
  end

  def self.translate( text )
    t = Translator.new
    t.perform( text )
  end
end