How to dynamically alter inheritance in Ruby

Question

I would like to dynamically specify the parent class for a class in Ruby. Consider this code:

class Agent
  def self.hook_up(calling_class, desired_parent_c         


        

Answer 1

I know this question is pretty old and already has some good answers. However I still miss a certain solution.

If your intention is not to dynamically assign the superclass, but rather create a hook to execute some code on inheritance (XY Problem). There is a build-in way to do this.

inherited(subclass)

Callback invoked whenever a subclass of the current class is created.

Example:

class Foo
  def self.inherited(subclass)
    puts "New subclass: #{subclass}"
  end
end

class Bar < Foo
end

class Baz < Bar
end

produces:

New subclass: Bar
New subclass: Baz

See: Class#inherited

If your intention is to dynamically create classes, I'd recommend looking at the answer of Joshua Cheek.