How do you do polymorphism in Ruby?

Question

In C#, I can do this:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        List<Animal> animals = new List<Animal>();

        animals.Add(new Dog());
        animals.Add(new Cat());

        foreach (Animal a in animals)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(a.MakeNoise());
            a.Sleep();
        }
    }
}

public class Animal
{
    public virtual string MakeNoise() { return String.Empty; }
    public void Sleep()
    {
        Console.Writeline(this.GetType().ToString() + " is sleeping.");
    }
}

public class Dog : Animal
{
    public override string MakeNoise()
    {
        return "Woof!";
    }
}

public class Cat : Animal
{
    public override string MakeNoise()
    {
        return "Meow!";
    }
}

Obviously, the output is (Slightly paraphrased):

• Woof
• Dog is Sleeping
• Meow
• Cat is Sleeping

Since C# is often mocked for its verbose type syntax, how do you handle polymorphism/virtual methods in a duck typed language such as Ruby?

Answer 1

edit: added more code for your updated question

disclaimer: I haven't used Ruby in a year or so, and don't have it installed on this machine, so the syntax might be entirely wrong. But the concepts are correct.

---

The exact same way, with classes and overridden methods:

class Animal
    def MakeNoise
        return ""
    end
    def Sleep
        print self.class.name + " is sleeping.\n"
    end
end

class Dog < Animal
    def MakeNoise
        return "Woof!"
    end
end

class Cat < Animal
    def MakeNoise
        return "Meow!"
    end
end

animals = [Dog.new, Cat.new]
animals.each {|a|
    print a.MakeNoise + "\n"
    a.Sleep
}

Answer 2

All the answers so far look pretty good to me. I thought I'd just mention that the whole inheritance thing is not entirely necessary. Excluding the "sleep" behaviour for a moment, we can achieve the whole desired outcome using duck-typing and omitting the need to create an Animal base class at all. Googling for "duck-typing" should yield any number of explanations, so for here let's just say "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..."

The "sleep" behaviour could be provided by using a mixin module, like Array, Hash and other Ruby built-in classes inclue Enumerable. I'm not suggesting it's necessarily better, just a different and perhaps more idiomatically Ruby way of doing it.

module Animal
  def sleep
    puts self.class.name + " sleeps"
  end
end

class Dog
  include Animal
  def make_noise
    puts "Woof"
  end
end

class Cat
  include Animal
  def make_noise
    puts "Meow"
  end
end

You know the rest...

Answer 3

Using idiomatic Ruby

class Animal
  def sleep
    puts "#{self.class} is sleeping"
  end
end

class Dog < Animal
  def make_noise
    "Woof!"
  end
end

class Cat < Animal
  def make_noise
    "Meow!"
  end
end

[Dog, Cat].each do |clazz|
  animal = clazz.new
  puts animal.make_noise
  animal.sleep
end

Answer 4

Building on the previous answer, is this how you might do it?

---

Second cut after clarification:

class Animal
    def MakeNoise
        raise NotImplementedError # I don't remember the exact error class
    end
    def Sleep
        puts self.class.to_s + " is sleeping."
    end
end

class Dog < Animal
    def MakeNoise
        return "Woof!"
    end
end

class Cat < Animal
    def MakeNoise
        return "Meow!"
    end
end

animals = [Dog.new, Cat.new]
animals.each {|a|
    puts a.MakeNoise
    a.Sleep
}

(I'll leave this as is, but "self.class.name" wins over ".to_s")

Answer 5

The principle of duck typing is just that the object has to respond to the called methods. So something like that may do the trick too :

module Sleeping
  def sleep; puts "#{self} sleeps"
end

dog = "Dog"
dog.extend Sleeping
class << dog
  def make_noise; puts "Woof!" end
end

class Cat
  include Sleeping
  def to_s; "Cat" end
  def make_noise; puts "Meow!" end
end

[dog, Cat.new].each do |a|
  a.sleep
  a.make_noise
end

Answer 6

A little variant of manveru's solution which dynamic create different kind of object based in an array of Class types. Not really different, just a little more clear.

Species = [Dog, Cat]

Species.each do |specie|
  animal = specie.new   # this will create a different specie on each call of new
  print animal.MakeNoise + "\n"
  animal.Sleep
end

Answer 7

This is how I would write it:

class Animal
  def make_noise; '' end
  def sleep; puts "#{self.class.name} is sleeping." end
end

class Dog < Animal; def make_noise; 'Woof!' end end
class Cat < Animal; def make_noise; 'Meow!' end end

[Dog.new, Cat.new].each do |animal|
  puts animal.make_noise
  animal.sleep
end

It's not really different from the other solutions, but this is the style that I would prefer.

That's 12 lines vs. the 41 lines (actually, you can shave off 3 lines by using a collection initializer) from the original C# example. Not bad!

Answer 8

There's a method becomes which implements a polymorphism (by coping all instance variables from given class to new one)

class Animal
  attr_reader :name

  def initialize(name = nil)
    @name = name
  end

  def make_noise
    ''
  end

  def becomes(klass)
    became = klass.new
    became.instance_variables.each do |instance_variable|
      value = self.instance_variable_get(instance_variable)
      became.instance_variable_set(instance_variable, value)
    end

    became
  end
end

class Dog < Animal
  def make_noise
    'Woof'
  end
end

class Cat < Animal
  def make_noise
    'Meow'
  end
end

animals = [Dog.new('Spot'), Cat.new('Tom')]

animals.each do |animal|
  new_animal = animal.becomes(Cat)
  puts "#{animal.class} with name #{animal.name} becomes #{new_animal.class}"
  puts "and makes a noise: #{new_animal.make_noise}"
  puts '----'
end

and result is:

Dog with name Spot becomes Cat
and makes a noise: Meow
----
Cat with name Tom becomes Cat
and makes a noise: Meow
----

• A polymorphism could be useful to avoid if statement (antiifcampaign.com)

• If you use RubyOnRails becomes method is already implemented: becomes

• Quicktip: if you mix polymorphism with STI it brings you the most efficient combo to refactor your code

I wish it helped you