How to get the class of a VALUE in Ruby C API - c

Question

I created some classes with Ruby's C API. I want to create a function whose behavior will change depending on the class of the Ruby object.
I tried to use is_a? from Ruby, however, I don't think it's the good way to do this. I checked "Creating Extension Libraries for Ruby" without success. The only direct way to check classes is with the default types.
I have my class "Klass" already created:
VALUE rb_cKlass = rb_define_class("Klass", rb_cObject);
And how I wanted to check if the class is the good one:
VALUE my_function(VALUE self, VALUE my_argument) {
if(rb_check_class(my_argument), rb_cKlass)) {
// do something if my_argument is an instance of Klass
} else {
return Qnil;
}
}
Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

I came across this recently, and used the RBASIC_CLASS macro, but was getting segfaults in certain scenarios for some unexplained reason.
After scanning through ruby.h, I found the CLASS_OF macro, which returns the class as VALUE of a given object.
VALUE obj = INT2NUM(10);
VALUE klass = CLASS_OF(obj); // rb_cInteger
Using Ruby 2.5

Answer 2

Every ruby object is internally represented by RObject struct (I will copy the source here for the sake of future readers):
struct RObject {
struct RBasic basic;
union {
struct {
uint32_t numiv;
VALUE *ivptr;
void *iv_index_tbl; /* shortcut for RCLASS_IV_INDEX_TBL(rb_obj_class(obj)) */
} heap;
VALUE ary[ROBJECT_EMBED_LEN_MAX];
} as;
};
The very first member, RBasic, defines the class:
struct RBasic {
VALUE flags;
const VALUE klass;
}
To get an access to RBasic metadata of anything, one might use RBASIC macro:
RBASIC(my_argument)
To get the class directly, one might use RBASIC_CLASS macro:
RBASIC_CLASS(my_argument)

Answer 3

If you want to stay close to the is_a? Ruby fashion (i.e. check if any of the ancestors is the expected class), you could directly use the C implementation of is_a?, rb_obj_is_kind_of:
rb_obj_is_kind_of(my_argument, rb_cKlass) // Qtrue OR Qfalse
And since Qfalse == 0, you can just use that method as a condition:
VALUE my_function(VALUE self, VALUE my_argument) {
if(rb_obj_is_kind_of(my_argument, rb_cKlass)) {
// do something if my_argument is an instance of Klass
} else {
return Qnil;
}
}
To find this method, just check Object#is_a? documentation and click to toggle source, you'll see the C implementation if it is a C function (hence this will work for most of the standard lib).