Classes and Objects in Ruby Language

Ruby is a dynamic and object-oriented programming language known for its simplic

ity and elegance. At the heart of Ruby’s object-oriented design lies the concept of classes and objects. In this post, we will explore what classes and objects are in Ruby and how they are used in real-world scenarios.

Classes in Ruby

In Ruby, a class is like a blueprint for creating objects. It defines the properties (attributes) and behaviors (methods) that the objects will have. Let’s look at an example of defining a simple class in Ruby:

class Person
  attr_accessor :name, :age

  def initialize(name, age)
    @name = name
    @age = age
  end

  def introduce
    puts "Hi, my name is #{@name, and I'm #{@age} years old."
  end
end

In this example, we have defined a Person class with two attributes (name and age) and a method (introduce) that allows a person object to introduce themselves.

Objects in Ruby

Once you have defined a class, you can create objects (also known as instances) of that class. Objects are individual instances of the class, each with its own unique set of attributes and state. Here’s how you can create and use objects of the Person class:

person1 = Person.new("Alice", 30)
person2 = Person.new("Bob", 25)

person1.introduce
person2.introduce

In this code, we create two Person objects, person1 and person2, with different name and age attributes. We then call the introduce method on each object to have them introduce themselves.

Inheritance in Ruby

Ruby supports inheritance, allowing you to create new classes based on existing ones. This promotes code reuse and modularity. For example, you can create a Student class that inherits from the Person class:

class Student < Person
  attr_accessor :student_id

  def initialize(name, age, student_id)
    super(name, age)
    @student_id = student_id
  end

  def study
    puts "Studying hard with student ID: #{@student_id}"
  end
end

The Student class inherits the attributes and methods from the Person class and adds its own unique attributes and methods.