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Ruby Ruby Booleans Build a Simple Todo List Program Part 4: Removing Todo Items

Posted by nathanielcusano
nathanielcusano
9,808 Points

todo_item.name. Is name a method?

none

1 Answer

Clayton Perszyk
MOD
Clayton Perszyk
Treehouse Moderator 48,850 Points
Clayton Perszyk
Clayton Perszyk
Treehouse Moderator 48,850 Points

Hey nathanielcusano,

It is indeed a method; however, it isn't explicitly defined.

I'll do my best to describe how it works.

At the top of the class, Jason added this line:

attr_reader :name, :todo_items

This is actually creating the methods for you. Behind the scenes, Ruby, is turning this line into the following code:

def name
  @name
end

def todo_items
  @todo_items
end

The methods being created are accessor methods, which are used to grab the value of an instance variable. There are also attr_writer, to set an instance variable, and attr_accessor, which is a combination of attr_reader and attr_writer.

Here's a link that should give you a more in depth understanding of attribute accessors:

http://www.rubyist.net/~slagell/ruby/accessors.html

Best,

Clayton

nathanielcusano
nathanielcusano
9,808 Points

oh ok thanks