Question

I found one source which successfully overrode Time.strftime like this:

class Time   alias :old_strftime :strftime   def strftime     #do something     old_strftime   end end 

The trouble is, strftime is an instance method. I need to override Time.now – a class method – in such away that any caller gets my new method, while the new method still calls the original .now method. I’ve looked at alias_method and have met with no success.

Answer 1

This is kinda hard to get your head around sometimes, but you need to open the ‘eigenclass’ which is the singleton associated with a specific class object. the syntax for this is class << self do…end.

class Time   alias :old_strftime :strftime    def strftime     puts 'got here'     old_strftime   end end  class Time   class << self     alias :old_now :now     def now       puts 'got here too'       old_now     end   end end  t = Time.now puts t.strftime