State in Ruby

State is a behavioral design pattern that allows an object to change the behavior when its internal state changes.

The pattern extracts state-related behaviors into separate state classes and forces the original object to delegate the work to an instance of these classes, instead of acting on its own.

Learn more about State

Complexity:

Popularity:

Usage examples: The State pattern is commonly used in Ruby to convert massive switch-base state machines into objects.

Identification: State pattern can be recognized by methods that change their behavior depending on the objects’ state, controlled externally.

Conceptual Example

This example illustrates the structure of the State design pattern. It focuses on answering these questions:

What classes does it consist of?
What roles do these classes play?
In what way the elements of the pattern are related?

main.rb: Conceptual example

# The Context defines the interface of interest to clients. It also maintains a
# reference to an instance of a State subclass, which represents the current
# state of the Context.
class Context
  # A reference to the current state of the Context.
  attr_accessor :state
  private :state

  # @param [State] state
  def initialize(state)
    transition_to(state)
  end

  # The Context allows changing the State object at runtime.
  def transition_to(state)
    puts "Context: Transition to #{state.class}"
    @state = state
    @state.context = self
  end

  # The Context delegates part of its behavior to the current State object.

  def request1
    @state.handle1
  end

  def request2
    @state.handle2
  end
end

# The base State class declares methods that all Concrete State should implement
# and also provides a backreference to the Context object, associated with the
# State. This backreference can be used by States to transition the Context to
# another State.
class State
  attr_accessor :context

  # @abstract
  def handle1
    raise NotImplementedError, "#{self.class} has not implemented method '#{__method__}'"
  end

  # @abstract
  def handle2
    raise NotImplementedError, "#{self.class} has not implemented method '#{__method__}'"
  end
end

# Concrete States implement various behaviors, associated with a state of the
# Context.

class ConcreteStateA < State
  def handle1
    puts 'ConcreteStateA handles request1.'
    puts 'ConcreteStateA wants to change the state of the context.'
    @context.transition_to(ConcreteStateB.new)
  end

  def handle2
    puts 'ConcreteStateA handles request2.'
  end
end

class ConcreteStateB < State
  def handle1
    puts 'ConcreteStateB handles request1.'
  end

  def handle2
    puts 'ConcreteStateB handles request2.'
    puts 'ConcreteStateB wants to change the state of the context.'
    @context.transition_to(ConcreteStateA.new)
  end
end

# The client code.

context = Context.new(ConcreteStateA.new)
context.request1
context.request2

output.txt: Execution result

Context: Transition to ConcreteStateA
ConcreteStateA handles request1.
ConcreteStateA wants to change the state of the context.
Context: Transition to ConcreteStateB
ConcreteStateB handles request2.
ConcreteStateB wants to change the state of the context.
Context: Transition to ConcreteStateA

State in Ruby

Conceptual Example

main.rb: Conceptual example

output.txt: Execution result

State in Other Languages