Difference Between require and require_relative in Ruby

This article will demonstrate the differences between the uses of require and require-relative in Ruby.

Difference Between require and require_relative in Ruby

These two methods behave in somewhat similar ways, but with some differences.

Use require_relative to Import Your Code From Another File

The require_relative method is used when you need to bring in your code from another file in the same project.

For example, say, we have my-project/lib.rb and my-project/data.rb. To import data.rb to lib.rb, inside lib.rb, you can write:

require_relative 'data'

Use require to Import External Dependencies

To import an external dependency, require is used. Using the same example above, say, we want to import an external dependency to lib.rb, we can write:

require 'external_package'