Monkey Patch - Applications

Applications

Monkey patching is used to:

• Replace methods/attributes/functions at runtime, e.g. to stub out a function during testing;
• Modify/extend behaviour of a third-party product without maintaining a private copy of the source code;
• Apply a patch at runtime to the objects in memory, instead of the source code on disk;
• Distribute security or behavioural fixes that live alongside the original source code (an example of this would be distributing the fix as a plugin for the Ruby on Rails platform).