When Good isn't Good Enough

On the flip side, sometimes you'll be working with a derived class (or subclass) and realize that you've overwritten a method or attribute defined in that class' base class (also called a parent or superclass) that you actually need. Have no fear! You can directly access the attributes or methods of a superclass with Ruby's built-in super keyword.

The syntax looks like this:

class DerivedClass < Base
  def some_method
    super(optional args)
      # Some stuff
    end
  end
end

When you call super from inside a method, that tells Ruby to look in the superclass of the current class and find a method with the same name as the one from which super is called. If it finds it, Ruby will use the superclass' version of the method.