Active Model Attribute Methods

Provides a way to add prefixes and suffixes to your methods as well as handling the creation of ActiveRecord::Base-like class methods such as table_name.

The requirements to implement ActiveModel::AttributeMethods are to:

  • include ActiveModel::AttributeMethods in your class.

  • Call each of its methods you want to add, such as attribute_method_suffix or attribute_method_prefix.

  • Call define_attribute_methods after the other methods are called.

  • Define the various generic _attribute methods that you have declared.

  • Define an attributes method which returns a hash with each attribute name in your model as hash key and the attribute value as hash value. Hash keys must be strings.

A minimal implementation could be:

class Person
  include ActiveModel::AttributeMethods

  attribute_method_affix  prefix: 'reset_', suffix: '_to_default!'
  attribute_method_suffix '_contrived?'
  attribute_method_prefix 'clear_'
  define_attribute_methods :name

  attr_accessor :name

  def attributes
    { 'name' => @name }
  end

  private

  def attribute_contrived?(attr)
    true
  end

  def clear_attribute(attr)
    send("#{attr}=", nil)
  end

  def reset_attribute_to_default!(attr)
    send("#{attr}=", 'Default Name')
  end
end

Namespace

Module

Methods

Constants

CALL_COMPILABLE_REGEXP = /\A[a-zA-Z_]\w*[!?]?\z/
NAME_COMPILABLE_REGEXP = /\A[a-zA-Z_]\w*[!?=]?\z/

Instance Public methods

attribute_missing(match, *args, &block)

attribute_missing is like method_missing, but for attributes. When method_missing is called we check to see if there is a matching attribute method. If so, we tell attribute_missing to dispatch the attribute. This method can be overloaded to customize the behavior.

📝 Source code
# File activemodel/lib/active_model/attribute_methods.rb, line 438
    def attribute_missing(match, *args, &block)
      __send__(match.target, match.attr_name, *args, &block)
    end
🔎 See on GitHub

method_missing(method, *args, &block)

Allows access to the object attributes, which are held in the hash returned by attributes, as though they were first-class methods. So a Person class with a name attribute can for example use Person#name and Person#name= and never directly use the attributes hash – except for multiple assignments with ActiveRecord::Base#attributes=.

It's also possible to instantiate related objects, so a Client class belonging to the clients table with a master_id foreign key can instantiate master through Client#master.

📝 Source code
# File activemodel/lib/active_model/attribute_methods.rb, line 425
    def method_missing(method, *args, &block)
      if respond_to_without_attributes?(method, true)
        super
      else
        match = matched_attribute_method(method.to_s)
        match ? attribute_missing(match, *args, &block) : super
      end
    end
🔎 See on GitHub

respond_to?(method, include_private_methods = false)

📝 Source code
# File activemodel/lib/active_model/attribute_methods.rb, line 446
    def respond_to?(method, include_private_methods = false)
      if super
        true
      elsif !include_private_methods && super(method, true)
        # If we're here then we haven't found among non-private methods
        # but found among all methods. Which means that the given method is private.
        false
      else
        !matched_attribute_method(method.to_s).nil?
      end
    end
🔎 See on GitHub

respond_to_without_attributes?(method, include_private_methods = false)

A Person instance with a name attribute can ask person.respond_to?(:name), person.respond_to?(:name=), and person.respond_to?(:name?) which will all return true.

Alias for: respond_to?