Are there equivalents to Ruby's method_missing in other languages?

Question

In Ruby, objects have a handy method called method_missing which allows one to handle method calls for methods that have not even been (explicitly) defined:

Answer 1

JavaScript has noSuchMethod, but unfortunately this is only supported by Firefox/Spidermonkey.

Here is an example:

wittyProjectName.__noSuchMethod__ = function __noSuchMethod__ (id, args) {
   if (id == 'errorize') {
    wittyProjectName.log("wittyProjectName.errorize has been deprecated.\n" +
                         "Use wittyProjectName.log(message, " +
                         "wittyProjectName.LOGTYPE_ERROR) instead.",
                         this.LOGTYPE_LOG);
    // just act as a wrapper for the newer log method
    args.push(this.LOGTYPE_ERROR);
    this.log.apply(this, args);
  }
}

Answer 2

Some use cases of method_missing can be implemented in Python using __getattr__ e.g.

class Roman(object):
  def roman_to_int(self, roman):
    # implementation here

  def __getattr__(self, name):
    return self.roman_to_int(name)

Then you can do:

>>> r = Roman()
>>> r.iv
4

Answer 3

PHP objects can be overloaded with the __call special method.

For example:

<?php
class MethodTest {
    public function __call($name, $arguments) {
        // Note: value of $name is case sensitive.
        echo "Calling object method '$name' "
             . implode(', ', $arguments). "\n";
    }
}

$obj = new MethodTest;
$obj->runTest('in object context');
?>

Answer 4

C# now has TryInvokeMember, for dynamic objects (inheriting from DynamicObject)

Answer 5

Perl has AUTOLOAD which works on subroutines & class/object methods.

Subroutine example:

use 5.012;
use warnings;

sub AUTOLOAD {
    my $sub_missing = our $AUTOLOAD;
    $sub_missing =~ s/.*:://;
    uc $sub_missing;
}

say foo();   # => FOO

Class/Object method call example:

use 5.012;
use warnings;

{
    package Shout;

    sub new { bless {}, shift }

    sub AUTOLOAD {
        my $method_missing = our $AUTOLOAD;
        $method_missing =~ s/.*:://;
        uc $method_missing;
    }
}

say Shout->bar;         # => BAR

my $shout = Shout->new;
say $shout->baz;        # => BAZ

Answer 6

Objective-C supports the same thing and calls it forwarding.