What is the point of using "send" instead of a normal method call?

Question

as far as I understand 'send' method, this

some_object.some_method("im an argument")

is same as this

some_object.send :some_method, "im an argument"

So what is the point using 'send' method?

Answer 1

It can come in handy if you don't know in advance the name of the method, when you're doing metaprogramming for example, you can have the name of the method in a variable and pass it to the send method.

It can also be used to call private methods, although this particular usage is not considered to be a good practice by most Ruby developers.

class Test
  private
  def my_private_method
    puts "Yay"
  end
end

t = Test.new

t.my_private_method # Error

t.send :my_private_method #Ok

You can use public_send though to only be able to call public methods.

Answer 2

In addition to Intrepidd's use cases, it is convenient when you want to route different methods on the same receiver and/or arguments. If you have some_object, and want to do different things on it depending on what foo is, then without send, you need to write like:

case foo
when blah_blah then some_object.do_this(*some_arguments)
when whatever then some_object.do_that(*some_arguments)
...
end

but if you have send, you can write

next_method =
case foo
when blah_blah then :do_this
when whatever then :do_that
....
end
some_object.send(next_method, *some_arguments)

or

some_object.send(
  case foo
  when blah_blah then :do_this
  when whatever then :do_that
  ....
  end,
  *some_arguments
)

or by using a hash, even this:

NextMethod = {blah_blah: :do_this, whatever: :do_that, ...}
some_object.send(NextMethod[:foo], *some_arguments)