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Ruby Modules

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What Are Modules?

1:47 with Jason Seifer

In Ruby, a module is kind of like a Class or Object in that it is it’s own “thing”. Modules are used for a few different purposes: containers, behaviors, and occasionally storage.

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    [SOUND] Hi, I'm Jason, your Treehouse Ruby teacher. 0:00
    In this course we're going to be going over modules in Ruby. 0:07
    If you've been following along with other Treehouse Ruby courses 0:11
    you've already come across and used modules, although you may not know it. 0:14
    If you haven't, don't worry. 0:19
    We'll be doing a little bit of a refresher about classes and 0:20
    how they relate to modules. 0:24
    The two share some very special similarities. 0:26
    In Ruby, a module is kind of like a class or object in that it's its own thing. 0:29
    Modules are used for a few different purposes, containers, 0:35
    behaviors, and occasionally, storage. 0:39
    One of the most common uses of modules in Ruby, is adding behavior to classes. 0:43
    Let's take a game as an example. 0:49
    If we're building a game that had robots that could shoot laser guns, and 0:52
    as we're coding the game, we give the robots methods like LaserBlast, 0:56
    LaserDamage, DrawLaser and more. 1:00
    Later on, as the game design progresses, 1:03
    we decide that we have a few more kinds of characters. 1:06
    Like sharks that need to shoot lasers also because it's a crazy world out there, 1:09
    and they were jealous of the robots. 1:13
    We could take all of the methods from the robot class that have to deal with lasers 1:16
    and put them into a module. 1:20
    And we could call the module something like uses laser blaster, and 1:23
    that's where we could keep all of that behavior. 1:27
    If we were to include the, uses LaserBlaster module, 1:31
    in the shark class, it would now have access to all of those methods. 1:34
    When we do that, it's called using a module as a mix in, 1:39
    because we're literally mixing in behavior to a class. 1:43

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