Self keyword behavior in Ruby - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding the Self Keyword in Ruby

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are creating a simple Ruby class to represent a person. You want to understand how the self keyword works inside instance methods and class methods.

🎯 Goal: Build a Ruby class called Person that uses the self keyword to show how it refers to the current object inside instance methods and to the class itself inside class methods.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a class called Person with an instance variable @name.

Add an instance method called show_self_instance that returns self.

Add a class method called show_self_class that returns self.

Create an instance of Person with the name "Alice".

Call both methods and print their results.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Understanding <code>self</code> helps you write clear Ruby classes that behave correctly when methods are called on objects or the class itself.

💼 Career

Many Ruby jobs require knowledge of object-oriented programming and how <code>self</code> works to build maintainable and bug-free code.

1

Create the Person class with an initialize method

Create a class called Person with an initialize method that takes a parameter name and sets it to an instance variable @name.

Ruby

# Create the Person class with initialize method
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use class Person to start the class and def initialize(name) to define the constructor.

2

Add an instance method that returns self

Inside the Person class, add an instance method called show_self_instance that returns self.

Ruby

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

  # Add instance method show_self_instance
  # Your code here
end

Need a hint?

Define a method with def show_self_instance and return self.

3

Add a class method that returns self

Add a class method called show_self_class inside the Person class that returns self. Use the self. prefix to define the class method.

Ruby

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

  def show_self_instance
    self
  end

  # Add class method show_self_class
  # Your code here
end

Need a hint?

Define a class method with def self.show_self_class and return self.

4

Create an instance and print results of both methods

Create a variable called person and set it to a new Person instance with the name "Alice". Then print the result of calling person.show_self_instance and Person.show_self_class.

Ruby

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

  def show_self_instance
    self
  end

  def self.show_self_class
    self
  end
end

# Create instance and print results
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use person = Person.new("Alice") to create the instance. Use puts to print the method results.