Blocks and yields in Ruby

Question

I am trying to understand blocks and yield and how they work in Ruby.

How is yield used? Many of the Rails applications I've looked at use yield in a weird way.

Can someone explain to me or show me where to go to understand them?

Solution 1

Yes, it is a bit puzzling at first.

In Ruby, methods can receive a code block in order to perform arbitrary segments of code.

When a method expects a block, you can invoke it by calling the yield function.

Example:

Take Person, a class with a name attribute and a do_with_name method. When the method is invoked it will pass the name attribute to the block.

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

    def do_with_name   # expects a block
        yield( @name ) # invoke the block and pass the `@name` attribute
    end
end

Now you can invoke this method and pass an arbitrary code block.

person = Person.new("Oscar")

# Invoking the method passing a block to print the value
person.do_with_name do |value|
    puts "Got: #{value}"
end

Would print:

Got: Oscar

Notice the block receives as a parameter a variable called value. When the code invokes yield it passes as argument the value of @name.

yield( @name )

The same method can be invoked with a different block.

For instance to reverse the name:

reversed_name = ""

# Invoke the method passing a different block
person.do_with_name do |value| 
    reversed_name = value.reverse
end

puts reversed_name

=> "racsO"

Other more interesting real life examples:

Filter elements in an array:

 days = ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"]  

 # Select those which start with 'T' 
 days.select do | item |
     item.match /^T/
 end

=> ["Tuesday", "Thursday"]

Or sort by name length:

 days.sort do |x,y|
    x.size <=> y.size
 end

=> ["Monday", "Friday", "Tuesday", "Thursday", "Wednesday"]

If the block is optional you can use:

yield(value) if block_given?

If is not optional, just invoke it.

You can try these examples on your computer with irb (Interactive Ruby Shell)

Here are all the examples in a copy/paste ready form:

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

    def do_with_name   # expects a block
        yield( @name ) # invoke the block and pass the `@name` attribute
    end
end


person = Person.new("Oscar")

# Invoking the method passing a block to print the value
person.do_with_name do |value|
    puts "Got: #{value}"
end


reversed_name = ""

# Invoke the method passing a different block
person.do_with_name do |value| 
    reversed_name = value.reverse
end

puts reversed_name



# Filter elements in an array:    
days = ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"]  

# Select those which start with 'T' 
days.select do | item |
    item.match /^T/
end



# Sort by name length:     
days.sort do |x,y|
   x.size <=> y.size
end

Solution 2

In Ruby, methods can check to see if they were called in such a way that a block was provided in addition to the normal arguments. Typically this is done using the block_given? method but you can also refer to the block as an explicit Proc by prefixing an ampersand (&) before the final argument name.

If a method is invoked with a block then the method can yield control to the block (call the block) with some arguments, if needed. Consider this example method that demonstrates:

def foo(x)
  puts "OK: called as foo(#{x.inspect})"
  yield("A gift from foo!") if block_given?
end

foo(10)
# OK: called as foo(10)
foo(123) {|y| puts "BLOCK: #{y} How nice =)"}
# OK: called as foo(123)
# BLOCK: A gift from foo! How nice =)

Or, using the special block argument syntax:

def bar(x, &block)
  puts "OK: called as bar(#{x.inspect})"
  block.call("A gift from bar!") if block
end

bar(10)
# OK: called as bar(10)
bar(123) {|y| puts "BLOCK: #{y} How nice =)"}
# OK: called as bar(123)
# BLOCK: A gift from bar! How nice =)

Solution 3

It's quite possible that someone will provide a truly detailed answer here, but I've always found this post from Robert Sosinski to be a great explanation of the subtleties between blocks, procs & lambdas.

I should add that I believe the post I'm linking to is specific to ruby 1.8. Some things have changed in ruby 1.9, such as block variables being local to the block. In 1.8, you'd get something like the following:

>> a = "Hello"
=> "Hello"
>> 1.times { |a| a = "Goodbye" }
=> 1
>> a
=> "Goodbye"

Whereas 1.9 would give you:

>> a = "Hello"
=> "Hello"
>> 1.times { |a| a = "Goodbye" }
=> 1
>> a
=> "Hello"

I don't have 1.9 on this machine so the above might have an error in it.

Solution 4

I found this article to be very useful. In particular, the following example:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

def test
  yield 5
  puts "You are in the method test"
  yield 100
end

test {|i| puts "You are in the block #{i}"}

test do |i|
    puts "You are in the block #{i}"
end

which should give the following output:

You are in the block 5
You are in the method test
You are in the block 100
You are in the block 5
You are in the method test
You are in the block 100

So essentially each time a call is made to yield ruby will run the code in the do block or inside {}. If a parameter is provided to yield then this will be provided as a parameter to the do block.

For me, this was the first time that I understood really what the do blocks were doing. It is basically a way for the function to give access to internal data structures, be that for iteration or for configuration of the function.

So when in rails you write the following:

respond_to do |format|
  format.html { render template: "my/view", layout: 'my_layout' }
end

This will run the respond_to function which yields the do block with the (internal) format parameter. You then call the .html function on this internal variable which in turn yields the code block to run the render command. Note that .html will only yield if it is the file format requested. (technicality: these functions actually use block.call not yield as you can see from the source but the functionality is essentially the same, see this question for a discussion.) This provides a way for the function to perform some initialisation then take input from the calling code and then carry on processing if required.

Or put another way, it's similar to a function taking an anonymous function as an argument and then calling it in javascript.

Solution 5

I wanted to sort of add why you would do things that way to the already great answers.

No idea what language you are coming from, but assuming it is a static language, this sort of thing will look familiar. This is how you read a file in java

public class FileInput {

  public static void main(String[] args) {

    File file = new File("C:\\MyFile.txt");
    FileInputStream fis = null;
    BufferedInputStream bis = null;
    DataInputStream dis = null;

    try {
      fis = new FileInputStream(file);

      // Here BufferedInputStream is added for fast reading.
      bis = new BufferedInputStream(fis);
      dis = new DataInputStream(bis);

      // dis.available() returns 0 if the file does not have more lines.
      while (dis.available() != 0) {

      // this statement reads the line from the file and print it to
        // the console.
        System.out.println(dis.readLine());
      }

      // dispose all the resources after using them.
      fis.close();
      bis.close();
      dis.close();

    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }
}

Ignoring the whole stream chaining thing, The idea is this

1. Initialize resource that needs to be cleaned up
2. use resource
3. make sure to clean it up

This is how you do it in ruby

File.open("readfile.rb", "r") do |infile|
    while (line = infile.gets)
        puts "#{counter}: #{line}"
        counter = counter + 1
    end
end

Wildly different. Breaking this one down

1. tell the File class how to initialize the resource
2. tell the file class what to do with it
3. laugh at the java guys who are still typing ;-)

Here, instead of handling step one and two, you basically delegate that off into another class. As you can see, that dramatically brings down the amount of code you have to write, which makes things easier to read, and reduces the chances of things like memory leaks, or file locks not getting cleared.

Now, its not like you can't do something similar in java, in fact, people have been doing it for decades now. It's called the Strategy pattern. The difference is that without blocks, for something simple like the file example, strategy becomes overkill due to the amount of classes and methods you need to write. With blocks, it is such a simple and elegant way of doing it, that it doesn't make any sense NOT to structure your code that way.

This isn't the only way blocks are used, but the others (like the Builder pattern, which you can see in the form_for api in rails) are similar enough that it should be obvious whats going on once you wrap your head around this. When you see blocks, its usually safe to assume that the method call is what you want to do, and the block is describing how you want to do it.

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Comments

[Ken Bloom]

You might be interested in the answer to Ruby’s yield feature in relation to computer science. Though it's a somewhat different question than yours, it may shed some light on the matter.

[maerics]

Great description in that article, it took me months to figure that all out on my own =)

[theIV]

I agree. I don't think I knew half of the stuff explained until I read it.

[Paritosh Piplewar]

how it prints racsO if the_name = ""

[OscarRyz]

Sorry, the name is an instance variable initialized with "Oscar" ( is not very clear in the answer )

[f.ardelian]

What about code like this? person.do_with_name {|string| yield string, something_else }

[yitznewton]

So in Javascripty terms, it's a standardized way of passing a callback to a given method, and calling it. Thanks for the explanation!

[Michael Hampton]

Let's simplify that a bit: File.readlines("readfile.rb").each_with_index do |line, index| puts "#{index + 1}: #{line}" end and laugh even harder at the Java guys.

[akostadinov]

@MichaelHampton, laugh after you read a file a couple of gigabytes long.

[Michael Hampton]

@akostadinov No... that makes me want to cry!

[LPing]

Good to know different ways to trigger a block.

[Nic]

@MichaelHampton Or, better yet: IO.foreach('readfile.rb').each_with_index { |line, index| puts "#{index}: #{line}" } (plus no memory issues)

[klenwell]

The updated link is 404 now, too. Here's the Wayback Machine link.

[theIV]

@klenwell thanks for the heads up, I've updated the link again.

[Roman Bulgakov]

In a more general way - a block is a ruby "enhanced" syntax sugar for Strategy pattern. because typical usage is to provide a code to do something in context of other operation. But ruby enhancements open a way to such cool things as writing DSLs using block to pass context around

[Ulysse BN]

Ok, but why ? There are plenty of reasons, such as the one Logger has to not perform some task if the user don't need to. You should explain yours though...

[makstaks]

Thanks @OscarRyz, I added a repl.it to help illustrate your great examples: repl.it/@makstaks/blocksandyieldsrubyexample

[OscarRyz]

@hmak awesome, I added the link to the answer

[Eric]

This is the (only) answer that really makes me understand what is block and yield, and how to use them.

[Nick M]

Can you fix the link please, it's 404'ing

[OscarRyz]

@NickM I removed the broken link and put all the examples in a copy/paste ready form at the bottom of the answer

[Nick M]

Cheers mate, much appreciated!