How to call a private method in Ruby

If you want to call a private method in Ruby - for any reason - you can use send, method and instance_eval:

class Foo

  private
    def bar
      puts 'You called bar'
    end
end
 
> foo = Foo.new
foo.bar # this, of course, throws an error
NoMethodError: private method `bar' called for #
 from (irb):129
 from :0

> foo.send(:bar)
You called bar
=> nil
m = foo.method(:bar)
=> #
> m.call
You called bar
=> nil
> foo.instance_eval { bar }
You called bar
=> nil

Remember you cannot use eval to call a private method:

> eval('foo.bar')
NoMethodError: private method `bar' called for #
 from (irb):140
 from (irb):140
 from :0

Reference: http://www.khelll.com/blog/ruby/ruby-dynamic-method-calling/