Question

I have this code that tries to return a value from a method:

temp = "123"
return temp

and I have this line that calls the method and assigns the return value:

person_connections = @client.get_person_connections(:id => current_user_id )

but when I try to inspect person_connections, it shows some different object string. Any idea how to return the actual value of the temp variable?

  def get_person_connections(options = {})
    person_id = options[:id]
    path = "/people/id=" + person_id + ":(num-connections)" 
    query_connections(path, options)
    self
  end

and

private

def query_connections(path, options={})
  fields = options.delete(:fields) || LinkedIn.default_profile_fields

  if options.delete(:public)
    path +=":public"
  elsif fields
    path +=":(#{fields.map{ |f| f.to_s.gsub("_","-") }.join(',')})"
  end

  headers = options.delete(:headers) || {}

  params = options.map { |k,v| v.is_a?(Array)  ? v.map{|i| "#{k}=#{i}"}.join("&") : "#{k}=#{v}" }.join("&")

  path   += "?#{params}" if not params.empty?

  temp_var = get(path, headers)

  hash = JSON.parse(temp_var)
  conn = hash["numConnections"]
end

Answer 1

As Samy said in a comment:

In Ruby, the last statement will be returned.

So if we take a look at get_person_connections, we see that the last line is self. What it means is that it returns the instance on which the method was called, @client in this case.

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Additional notes: the solution would be to remove self, although if the method is used elsewhere be careful as returning self is often used to allow chaining of methods (though it hardly makes sense to do that on a get method).