An Introduction to Metaprogramming

The string 'x + 1' is translated and executed when the code is run, printing 4 as a result. Note that even the value bound to variable x is available during the runtime evaluation.

The following Ruby code demonstrates a contrived way to find the result of adding all the integer numbers between 1 and 100. Instead of using a normal loop or iteration method, we generate a big string containing the expression “1+2+3+...+99+100” and then proceed to evaluate it:

puts eval((1..100).to_a.join('+'))

The eval function should be used with care. If the string used as the argument to eval comes from an untrusted source (for example, from user input), it can be potentially dangerous (imagine what could happen if the string to evaluate contains the Ruby expression rm -r *). In many cases, there are alternatives to eval that are more flexible, less insecure and do not require the speed hit of parsing code during runtime.

A quine is special kind of source code generator. The jargon file defines a quine as “a program that generates a copy of its own source text as its complete output”. You might be right if you think this lacks any practical value by itself, but as a brain-teaser, it can be mind-blowing. Here's a quine written by Ryan Davis, which is one of the shortest ones for the Ruby language:

f="f=%p;puts f%%f";puts f%f

Run this program, and you will get it as output. You might even try something like this from a shell prompt:

ruby -e 'f="f=%p;puts f%%f";puts f%f' | ruby

Here we're using the -e option from the command line to specify one line of Ruby source to execute, and then we use a pipe to send its output to another instance of the Ruby interpreter. The output is once again the same program source.

Dynamic languages, such as Ruby, allow you to modify different parts of your program easily during runtime without having to generate source code explicitly as we did previously. Ruby's core API and frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails, employ this facility to automate common programming tasks. For example, in a class definition, you can use the attr_accessor method to produce the read/write access methods automatically for a given attribute name. Thus, the following code:

class Person
  attr_accessor :name
end

is equivalent to this more verbose code:

class Person
  def name
    @name
  end
  def name=(new_name)
    @name = new_name
  end
end

The previous code has a minor drawback: the corresponding instance variable @name is not really created until you first set its value. This means you'll get a nil value if you happen to read the name attribute before writing to it. If you're not careful, this could introduce a few subtle bugs into your programs. The easiest way to avoid this problem is to set the @name instance variable to a reasonable value in the Person#initialize method. Because this is a quite common scenario, wouldn't it be nice to have this method generated automatically, in addition to the read/write accessors? Let's define an attr_initialize method that'll do that using Ruby's metaprogramming facilities.

First, let's briefly address two methods that are key to performing our desired metaprogramming magic:

cls.define_method(name) { body }

This adds a new instance method to the receiving class. It takes as input the method's name (as a symbol or string) and its body (as a code block):

obj.instance_variable_set(name, value)

The above code binds an instance variable to the specified value. The name of the instance variable should be a symbol or string, and it also should include the @ prefix.

Now, we're ready to define the attr_initialize class method as an extension to the Object class so that any other class can use it:

require 'generator'

class Object
  def Object.attr_initialize(*attrs)
    define_method(:initialize) do |*args|
      if attrs.length != args.length
        raise ArgumentError,
          "wrong number of arguments " +
          "(#{args.length} for #{attrs.length})"
      end
      SyncEnumerator.new(attrs, args).each do
        |attr, arg|
        instance_variable_set("@#{attr}", arg)
      end
    end
    attr_accessor *attrs
  end
end

The attr_initialize method takes as input a variable number of attribute names (attrs). Each attribute name has the same position reserved for it in the dynamically created initialize method parameter list (args) in order to set its initial value. We start the new method's code by checking that the number of arguments being received are the same as the number of attributes we originally specified. If not, we raise an error with a descriptive message. Afterward, we use a SyncEnumerator object (from the generator library) to iterate at the same time over the declared attributes list (attrs) and the actual arguments list (args) so as to perform a one-by-one attribute-argument binding using the instance_variable_set method. Finally, we delegate to the attr_accessor method in order to create the read/write access methods for all the declared attributes.

Here's how we can use the attr_initialize method:

class Student
  attr_initialize :name, :id, :address
end

s = Student.new('Erika', 123, '13 Fake St')
s.address = '13 Wrong Rd'
puts s.name, s.id, s.address

The expected output would be:

Erika
123
13 Wrong Rd