How to Check If a Variable is Defined in Ruby

Ruby has this defined? keyword that helps you check if a variable is defined or not.

If the variable exists you’ll get its type:

apple = 1

defined?(apple)
# "local-variable"

If it doesn’t you’ll get nil:

defined?(bacon)
# nil

This is like Javascript’s typeof operator. If you want to know the class of an object use the class method instead of this.

A few interesting points to note:

• defined? is a keyword, not a method
• defined? is one of the few things in Ruby that ends in a question mark, but doesn’t follow the usual convention to return either true or false
• defined? can tell the difference between a nil value & a variable that has never been set before

These special attributes make this keyword worth learning about.

A Better Way To Check For Defined Variables

This keyword can be useful, but it has some problems.

Why?

Because of its low operator precedence.

If you do something like this:

defined? orange && orange.size

The result is “expression”.

Because orange && orange.size is interpreted as the argument to defined?.

The correct way to do this would be:

defined?(orange) && orange.size

Ruby has other ways to check if a variable has been defined or not.

For local variables:

local_variables.include?(:orange)

For instance variables:

instance_variable_defined?("@food")

But you don’t want to use any of that.

In 99% of the cases, if a local variable is missing you have a typo or someone forgot to declare that variable.

What about instance variables?

Undefined instance variables are always nil, so you want to check for that.

Try the “safe navigator operator” (Ruby 2.3+) which only calls a method if the variable is not nil.

Here’s an example:

if @user&.country == "Spain"
  # ...
end

This the equivalent to:

if @user && @user.country == "Spain"
  # ...
end

These aren’t as universal as the defined? keyword, but they are more predictable & less prone to errors.

Check If A Method Is Defined

You can use defined? to check if a method is defined, but it’s not that practical.

Example:

defined?(puts)
# "method"

Because it’s a keyword & not a method you can’t use it with an object.

This is what I mean:

[].defined?(:size)
# undefined method `defined?' for []:Array

You’re looking for the respond_to? method.

Here’s how to use it:

[].respond_to?(:size)
# true

[].respond_to?(:orange)
# false

Check If A Class Exists

Example:

defined?(Object)
# "constant"

defined?(A)
# nil

A better option is to use the const_defined? method.

Like this:

Object.const_defined?(:String)
# true

Object.const_defined?(:A)
# false

Summary

There you go, you learned an easy way to check if a given variable, class or method exists!

When working with variables what you want most of the time is to check for nil, instead of whether or not a variable is defined. Or even better, convert the variable into a known class using a conversion method.

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