Using keyword arguments

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You define a keyword argument in a method by specifying the name in the method definition:

def say(message: "Hello World")
  puts message
end

say
# => "Hello World"

say message: "Today is Monday"
# => "Today is Monday"

You can define multiple keyword arguments, the definition order is irrelevant:

def say(message: "Hello World", before: "<p>", after: "</p>")
  puts "#{before}#{message}#{after}"
end

say
# => "<p>Hello World</p>"

say message: "Today is Monday"
# => "<p>Today is Monday</p>"

say after: "</p><hr>", message: "Today is Monday"
# => "<p>Today is Monday</p><hr>"

Keyword arguments can be mixed with positional arguments:

def say(message, before: "<p>", after: "</p>")
  puts "#{before}#{message}#{after}"
end

say "Hello World", before: "<span>", after: "</span>"
# => "<span>Hello World</span>"

Mixing keyword argument with positional argument was a very common approach before Ruby 2.1, because it was not possible to define required keyword arguments.

Moreover, in Ruby < 2.0, it was very common to add an Hash at the end of a method definition to use for optional arguments. The syntax is very similar to keyword arguments, to the point where optional arguments via Hash are compatible with Ruby 2 keyword arguments.

def say(message, options = {})
  before = option.fetch(:before, "<p>")
  after  = option.fetch(:after, "</p>")
  puts "#{before}#{message}#{after}"
end

# The method call is syntactically equivalent to the keyword argument one
say "Hello World", before: "<span>", after: "</span>"
# => "<span>Hello World</span>"

Note that trying to pass a not-defined keyword argument will result in an error:

def say(message: "Hello World")
  puts message
end

say foo: "Hello"
# => ArgumentError: unknown keyword: foo

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