Yield Block

Here is a simple method that doesn't do much:

def take_block
    puts "before block"
    puts "after block"
end

take_block

The last line calls the method take_block which prints the following output:

before block
after block

Pretty boring. But we'll see how it can get more interesting.

blocks

You know that you can pass variables (such as 3 or "hello") to other methods, but Ruby also lets you pass around pieces of code! The common way to do those is with a block,* a piece of code marked with do and the beginning and end at the end.

This code below calls take_block again, but passes it a block of code:

#method that takes block
def take_block
    puts "before block"
    yield
    puts "after block"
end

# call method and pass it a block
take_block do
    puts "i am block"   
end 

This will print out the following:

before block
i am block
after block

Notice how the method take_block now has a line that says yield. This calls the block that was passed into the method. Ruby on Rails uses a similar structure to create web pages. A general layout page stores the content shown on every page, and it calls yield to run the code of a specific page. See the challenge below for a simplified version of this.

Blocks can be surrounded with curly braces {} instead of do and end:

take_block { puts "i am block" } 

This is usually used when the block's code fits on one line.

*A block is similar to lambdas found in other languages.