Write and Read Rails Attributes with Aliases
Lately I've been using a nice alias for writing record attributes in Rails, []=. Behold:
[1] pry(main)> d = Developer.new
=> #<Developer:0x007ff7130f8ef0
[2] pry(main)> d[:username] = 'isaacemard'
=> "isaacemard"
[3] pry(main)> d.username
=> "isaacemard"
That's all it takes. There's a getter variant, too:
[4] pry(main)> d[:username]
=> "isaacemard"
Here's how I used it today:
# app/models/developer.rb
before_create :generate_slug
def generate_slug
self[:slug] ||= SecureRandom.hex(5)
end
To me this code reads a lot more nicely than write_attribute(attr_name, value). These aliases have been a part of Rails since at least 2012.
h/t Mike Chau and Chris Erin
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