Question

Here is a Ruby ActiveRecord class:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :user_tokens
  devise :trackable, :confirmable

I have two Ruby terminology questions about it:

1. How do you call :confirmable, is it an “aspect” of class User?
2. In the code above, how do you call the devise word? Is it a “method call”?

PS: I am quite new to Ruby. I have searched online, and read many Ruby OOP tutorials, but none gave those two things a proper name.

Answer 1

devise is a method call, it could be either a class or instance method, I’m not sure. I think here it is best to refer to :confirmable as an argument which is passed to the devise method. You’d best refer to the devise docs for a better understanding of what its role is.