Question

Other than self.class.send :method, args..., of course. I’d like to make a rather complex method available at both the class and instance level without duplicating the code.

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UPDATE:

@Jonathan Branam: that was my assumption, but I wanted to make sure nobody else had found a way around. Visibility in Ruby is very different from that in Java. You’re also quite right that private doesn’t work on class methods, though this will declare a private class method:

class Foo   class <<self     private     def bar       puts 'bar'     end   end end  Foo.bar # => NoMethodError: private method 'bar' called for Foo:Class 

Answer 1

Here is a code snippet to go along with the question. Using ‘private’ in a class definition does not apply to class methods. You need to use ‘private_class_method’ as in the following example.

class Foo   def self.private_bar     # Complex logic goes here     puts 'hi'   end   private_class_method :private_bar   class <<self     private     def another_private_bar       puts 'bar'     end   end   public   def instance_bar     self.class.private_bar   end   def instance_bar2     self.class.another_private_bar   end end  f=Foo.new f=instance_bar # NoMethodError: private method `private_bar' called for Foo:Class f=instance_bar2 # NoMethodError: private method `another_private_bar' called for Foo:Class 

I don’t see a way to get around this. The documentation says that you cannot specify the receive of a private method. Also you can only access a private method from the same instance. The class Foo is a different object than a given instance of Foo.

Don’t take my answer as final. I’m certainly not an expert, but I wanted to provide a code snippet so that others who attempt to answer will have properly private class methods.