module Forwardable

The Forwardable module provides delegation of specified methods to a designated object, using the methods def_delegator and def_delegators.

For example, say you have a class RecordCollection which contains an array @records. You could provide the lookup method record_number(), which simply calls [] on the @records array, like this:

require 'forwardable'

class RecordCollection
  attr_accessor :records
  extend Forwardable
  def_delegator :@records, :[], :record_number
end

We can use the lookup method like so:

r = RecordCollection.new
r.records = [4,5,6]
r.record_number(0)  # => 4

Further, if you wish to provide the methods size, <<, and map, all of which delegate to @records, this is how you can do it:

class RecordCollection # re-open RecordCollection class
  def_delegators :@records, :size, :<<, :map
end

r = RecordCollection.new
r.records = [1,2,3]
r.record_number(0)   # => 1
r.size               # => 3
r << 4               # => [1, 2, 3, 4]
r.map { |x| x * 2 }  # => [2, 4, 6, 8]

You can even extend regular objects with Forwardable.

my_hash = Hash.new
my_hash.extend Forwardable              # prepare object for delegation
my_hash.def_delegator "STDOUT", "puts"  # add delegation for STDOUT.puts()
my_hash.puts "Howdy!"

Another example¶ ↑

You could use Forwardable as an alternative to inheritance, when you don’t want to inherit all methods from the superclass. For instance, here is how you might add a range of Array instance methods to a new class Queue:

class Queue
  extend Forwardable

  def initialize
    @q = [ ]    # prepare delegate object
  end

  # setup preferred interface, enq() and deq()...
  def_delegator :@q, :push, :enq
  def_delegator :@q, :shift, :deq

  # support some general Array methods that fit Queues well
  def_delegators :@q, :clear, :first, :push, :shift, :size
end

q = Thread::Queue.new
q.enq 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
q.push 6

q.shift    # => 1
while q.size > 0
  puts q.deq
end

q.enq "Ruby", "Perl", "Python"
puts q.first
q.clear
puts q.first

This should output:

2
3
4
5
6
Ruby
nil

Notes¶ ↑

Be advised, RDoc will not detect delegated methods.

forwardable.rb provides single-method delegation via the def_delegator and def_delegators methods. For full-class delegation via DelegateClass, see delegate.rb.