difference between attr_accessor and attr_accessible?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

What's the difference between attr_accessor and attr_accessible?

Is attr_accessor to create a virtual variable/object and attr_accessible makes it accessible? Do you need attr_accessible if you already have attr_accessor?

Thanks!

2

Hi,

What's the difference between attr_accessor and attr_accessible?

They're completely unrelated. attr_accessor is a pure ruby method and creates a setter & getter method for an instance variable.

attr_accessible (and its counterpart attr_protected) are railsisms and are there to control which properties of an object a user can change through mass assignment

Fred

3

Thanks - what's mass assignment? Assigning attributes to an object?

4

This is mass assignment:

`User.new(params[:user])

Basically assigning all the attributes to the an instance based on the params[:user] hash. `