I have seen codebases using Structs to wrap around attributes and behavior inside a class. What is the difference between a Ruby Class and a Struct? And when should one be used over the other.?
From the Struct docs:
A Struct is a convenient way to bundle a number of attributes together, using accessor methods, without having to write an explicit class.
The Struct class generates new subclasses that hold a set of members and their values. For each member a reader and writer method is created similar to Module#attr_accessor.
So, if I want a Person
class that I can access a name attribute (read and write), I either do it by declaring a class:
class Person
attr_accessor :name
def initalize(name)
@name = name
end
end
or using Struct:
Person = Struct.new(:name)
In both cases I can run the following code:
person = Person.new
person.name = "Name"
#or Person.new("Name")
puts person.name
When use it?
As the description states we use Structs when we need a group of accessible attributes without having to write an explicit class.
For example I want a point variable to hold X and Y values:
point = Struct.new(:x, :y).new(20,30)
point.x #=> 20
Some more examples: