Implementing Namespaces in Ruby using Nested Modules

Recently, I finally got around to starting to learn Ruby. I am finding it to be rather pleasant to program in. Now, one thing that I am used to using with an Object Oriented language (especially with my .NET background) are Namespaces. The only problem is that you can’t just declare a namespace in Ruby using a “namespace” keyword. However, it’s not difficult to implement Namespaces in Ruby, all you need to do is nest some modules.

To demonstrate this, I’ll show you how to create the familiar (for .NET developers) System.Windows.Forms namespace with the MessageBox.Show method:

module System

  module Windows

    module Forms

      module MessageBox

        def MessageBox.Show(title, message)

          api = Win32API.new("user32","MessageBox",["L","P","P","L"],"I")

          api.call(0, message, title, 0)

        end

      end

    end

  end

end 

Now to use the namespace you can use one of the following methods:

System::Windows::Forms::MessageBox.Show("Some Title", "This is a test message.") 

Or by including the “namespace”:

include System::Windows::Forms



MessageBox.Show("Some Title", "This is another test message.")

As you can see it’s rather simple to create “.NET”-like namespaces in Ruby.

Now, I know this technique is basically allowing me to write .NET code in Ruby, but that was pretty much the point of figuring this out. Now, back to learning how to write Ruby code in Ruby.

Oh, yeah now only if the syntax highlighter in BlogEngine.NET supported Ruby….