Creating a temporary file

Ruby:
Creating a temporary file

How to:

Ruby’s standard library provides Tempfile for creating temporary files. Let’s dive right in:

require 'tempfile'

Tempfile.create('my_temp') do |tempfile|
  tempfile.write('Temporary content')
  puts "Temporary file is located at: #{tempfile.path}"
end
# After the block, the file is automatically deleted.

Once you run this, you’ll see:

Temporary file is located at: /tmp/my_temp20180418-56789-1234567

This file won’t stick around longer than needed. As soon as the block ends, Ruby cleans up for you.

Deep Dive

The Tempfile class has been around since Ruby 1.8, practiced and polished over time. Under the hood, it uses your system’s temporary file path, offered by the operating system.

Alternatives? Sure, you could manually create and track temp files, but why reinvent the wheel? Tempfile gives you a random, unique filename, reducing the risk of collisions.

For those hankering after more control, the Tempfile.new method takes parameters for tweaking file name and location. But remember, with great power comes great responsibility - you’ll need to delete these files manually.

The real edge of using Tempfile lies in its thread-safe and garbage-collected nature. It locks the file down and ensures that sensitive data doesn’t linger longer than it should. A temporary file behaves much like a standard File object, so you can read from, write to, and otherwise manipulate it using typical file operations.

Ruby:Creating a temporary file

How to:

Deep Dive

See Also

Ruby:
Creating a temporary file