Ruby AOP in 12 lines of Code

First, we shim the Ruby Object class with a profiling aspect, in this case an additional method called profile that will wrap any existing method with timing code that we tell it to.

Lets put this in a file called: aop_extension.rb.

class Object

  def Object.profile symbol

    _symbol = ("rprof_" + symbol.to_s).to_sym

    alias_method _symbol, symbol

    # Define the new wrapper method 

    self.send(:define_method, symbol.to_s) { |*args|

      start_time = Time.now

      self.send(_symbol, *args)

      puts (Time.now - start_time).to_s + " have elapsed"

    }

    puts "The new method " + _symbol.to_s + " has been created for method " + symbol.to_s

  end

end

Now lets define a class that we can use as a test subject.  Create a file called greeter.rb.  Add the following:

 

require "./aop_extension.rb"

 

class Greeter

   def hello

    puts "hello"

  end

  profile :hello

end

Notice that in the constructor code we tell the inherited profile method to go after the “hello” method.  This creates a proxy method that will run the targeted method on behalf of callers.

Now lets see this thing in action.  For this we’ll create a file called main.rb.  Add the following:

require "./greeter.rb"

 

t = Greeter.new

t.hello

Finally, after all this extra heavy lifting we can see the goodness shining through in the output:

$ ruby main.rb
The new method rprof_hello has been created for method hello
hello
0.001 have elapsed

Wow, we didn’t even break a sweat on that one.