Writing Ruby Libraries - hiding methods from outside the module
- by JP
Hi all, I'm writing a Ruby library which has a module with a bunch of classes inside it. Many of these classes need to be usable and modifiable by calling scripts, but I don't want (some of) the initializers to be visible/callable:
module MyLib
class Control
def initialize
# They can use this
end
def do_stuff
Helper.new('things')
end
end
class Helper
# Shouldn't be visible
def initialize(what)
@what = what
end
def shout
@what
end
end
end
c = MyLib::Control.new
h = c.do_stuff
p h.shout
# => "things"
# ^ All of this is desired
# v This is undesirable
p MyLib::Helper.new('!')
# => <MyLib::Helper @what='!'>
If it's a simple thing, then I'd also appreciate the generated RDoc not even include the .new method for the Helper class either. Any ideas?
Thanks for reading!
