Book Image

Comprehensive Ruby Programming

By : Jordan Hudgens
Book Image

Comprehensive Ruby Programming

By: Jordan Hudgens

Overview of this book

Ruby is a powerful, general-purpose programming language that can be applied to any task. Whether you are an experienced developer who wants to learn a new language or you are new to programming, this book is your comprehensive Ruby coding guide. Starting with the foundational principles, such as syntax, and scaling up to advanced topics such as big data analysis, this book will give you all of the tools you need to be a professional Ruby developer. A few of the key topics are: object-oriented programming, built-in Ruby methods, core programming skills, and an introduction to the Ruby on Rails and Sinatra web frameworks. You will also build 10 practical Ruby programs. Created by an experienced Ruby developer, this book has been written to ensure it focuses on the skills you will need to be a professional Ruby developer. After you have read this book, you will be ready to start building real-world Ruby projects.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)

What are the differences between class and instance methods in Ruby?

Even though we haven't covered classes in Ruby, I thought it would be good to show you the differences between class and instance methods in Ruby since it's important to see the different behaviors.

For now, you can ignore the class syntax and focus on the functionality, especially the way in which both the method types are called.

I'm going to create a class and add two methods into it, the first being a class method and the second an instance method:

class Invoice 
# Class method
def self.print_out
"Printed out invoice"
end

# Instance method
def convert_to_pdf
"Converted to PDF"
end
end

If you notice, the only difference in the syntax is that I used the self word for class methods, and the name by itself for instance methods.

Now, when I want to call...