Ruby Quicktips

Include vs. Extend

You can either use include or extend to mix in a module’s functionality into a class. The difference is this:

• include makes the module’s methods available to the instance of a class, while
• extend makes these methods available to the class itself.

Check out this example:

module Greetings
  def say_hello
    puts "Hello!"
  end
end

class Human
  include Greetings
end

Human.new.say_hello # => "Hello!"
Human.say_hello     # NoMethodError

class Robot
  extend Greetings
end

Robot.new.say_hello # NoMethodError
Robot.say_hello     # => "Hello!"

If you want more information on include vs. extend, I recommend the following resources:

• What is the difference between include and extend in Ruby? on Stack Overflow.
• Include vs Extend in Ruby by John Nunemaker
• Ruby extend and include by Jay Fields