Why is this an issue?

An empty method is generally considered bad practice and can lead to confusion, readability, and maintenance issues. Empty methods bring no functionality and are misleading to others as they might think the method implementation fulfills a specific and identified requirement.

There are several reasons for a method not to have a body:

• It is an unintentional omission, and should be fixed to prevent an unexpected behavior in production.
• It is not yet, or never will be, supported. In this case an exception should be thrown.
• The method is an intentionally-blank override. In this case a nested comment should explain the reason for the blank override.

How to fix it

Code examples

Noncompliant code example

def shouldNotBeEmpty()  # Noncompliant - method is empty
end

def notImplemented()  # Noncompliant - method is empty
end

def emptyOnPurpose()  # Noncompliant - method is empty
end

Compliant solution

def shouldNotBeEmpty()
  doSomething()
end

def notImplemented()
  raise NotImplementedError, 'notImplemented() cannot be performed because ...'
end

def emptyOnPurpose()
  # comment explaining why the method is empty
end