Feature Idea: ActiveRecord::Base[id]

[Hampton]

I've got a patch working for this and wanted to know the core-team's
opinion on this feature-add. I often find myself wanting to do finds
with id's and having the natural urge do to this.

User[12] #=> User.find(12)

Asking the User < ActiveRecord::Base object to give me an "index" on
it... aka, the primary key... aka, the id.

Any interest in this as a nice little shorthand? I'm asking here
before making an actual-patch because I know that changes to
ActiveRecord API are serious and I wanted to get opinions first.

-hampton.

[Jack_Danger_Canty]

In case you didn’t see it Jamis wrote about this a while back:
http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2007/4/4/activerecord-base-find-shortcut

::Jack Danger

[Mislav]

I’ve sometimes been using it even before Jamis blogged about it and, naturally, I like it.

http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2007/4/4/activerecord-base-find-shortcut

But would it cause confusion, chaos? Dunno.

[Pratik1 (Pratik)]

It's a widely used technique already actually.

Check http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2007/4/4/activerecord-base-find-shortcut
and comment section there to see why it's not in core.

Thanks,
Pratik

[Mislav]

Hm, I’ve never really read the comments. There are some good arguments in there!

I’m also in the “don’t add it” camp. It could really lead to confusion.

[Josh6 (Josh)]

Yeah, same here.

But it makes a great plugin!

http://projects.wh.joshpeek.com/browser/plugins/find_shortcut

[Cogaidhean]

-1 Don't add this to core, keep it as a plugin.

For example, I use a plugin called "acts_as_lookup" in which you can
do things like State["NY","California"] and State[5] where it will
return the matching records.

IMHO defining the [] method on AR objects should be done in plugins,
or it should be gone all out with configurability options.