Ruby: Replace method_missing with dynamic method definitions

You have methods you want to handle dynamically without the pain of debugging method_missing.

class Decorator
  def initialize(subject)
    @subject = subject
  end
  
  def method_missing(sym, *args, &block)
    @subject.send sym, *args, &block
  end
end

becomes

class Decorator
  def initialize(subject)
    subject.public_methods(false).each do |meth|
      (class << self; self; end).class_eval do
        define_method meth do |*args|
          subject.send meth, *args
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Motivation

Debugging classes that use method_missing can often be painful. At best you often get a NoMethodError on an object that you didn't expect, and at worst you get stack level too deep (SystemStackError).

There are times that method_missing is required. If the usage of an object is unknown, but must support unexpected method calls you may not be able to avoid the use of method_missing.

However, often you know how an object will be used and using Dynamically Define Method you can achieve the same behavior without relying on method_missing.

Mechanics

• Dynamically define the necessary methods
• Remove method_missing
• Test

Example: Dynamic delegation without method_missing

Delegation is a common task while developing software. Delegation can be handled explicitly by defining methods yourself or by utilizing something from the Ruby Standard Library such as Forwardable. Using these techniques gives you control over what methods you want to delegate to the subject object; however, sometimes you want to delegate all methods without specifying them. Ruby's Standard Library also provides this capability with the delegate library, but we'll assume we need to implement our own for this example.

The simple way to handle delegation (ignoring the fact that you would want to undefine all the standard methods a class gets by default) is to use method_missing to pass any method calls straight to the subject.

class Decorator
  def initialize(subject)
    @subject = subject
  end
  
  def method_missing(sym, *args, &block)
    @subject.send sym, *args, &block
  end
end

This solution does work, but it can be problematic when mistakes are made. For example, calling a method that does not exist on the subject will result in the subject raising a NoMethodError. Since the method call is being called on the decorator, but the subject is raising the error it may be painful to track down where the problem resides.

The wrong object raising a NoMethodError is significantly better than the dreaded stack level too deep (SystemStackError). This can be caused by something as simple as forgetting to use the subject instance variable and trying to use a non-existent subject method or any misspelled method. When this happens the only feedback you have is that something went wrong, but Ruby isn't sure exactly what it was.

These problems can be avoided entirely by using the available data to dynamically define methods at run time. The following example defines an instance method on the decorator for each public method of the subject.

class Decorator
  def initialize(subject)
    subject.public_methods(false).each do |meth|
      (class << self; self; end).class_eval do
        define_method meth do |*args|
          subject.send meth, *args
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Using this technique any invalid method calls will be correctly reported as NoMethodErrors on the decorator. Additionally, there's no method_missing definition, which should help avoid the stack level too deep problem entirely.

Example: Using user defined data to define methods

Often you can use the information from a class definition to define methods instead of relying on method_missing. For example, the following code relies on method_missing to determine if any of the attributes are nil.

class Person
  attr_accessor :name, :age
  
  def method_missing(sym, *args, &block)
    empty?(sym.to_s.sub(/^empty_/,"").chomp("?"))
  end
  
  def empty?(sym)
    self.send(sym).nil?
  end
end

The code works, but it suffers from the same debugging issues that the previous example does. Utilizing Dynamically Define Method the issue can be avoided by defining the attributes and creating the empty_attribute? methods at the same time.

class Person
  def self.attrs_with_empty_methods(*args)
    attr_accessor *args
    
    args.each do |attribute|
      define_method "empty_#{attribute}?" do
        self.send(attribute).nil?
      end
    end
  end
  
  attrs_with_empty_methods :name, :age
end