human_attribute_name deprecated?

rubyonrails-core
1

While trying to deal with error messages for attributes of models using STI, I stumbled upon the human_attribute_name method...

    # Transforms attribute key names into a more humane format, such as "First name" instead of "first_name". Example:     # Person.human_attribute_name("first_name") # => "First name"     # Deprecated in favor of just calling "first_name".humanize     def human_attribute_name(attribute_key_name) #:nodoc:       attribute_key_name.humanize     end

I'm wondering if it really is deprecated.

It's still in use in validations for adding errors, and I think it's a great solution for having a shared column in a base model that can be reported as having an error differently depending on the subclass using STI.

For example, I have an Address model with subclasses of EmailAddress and WebAddress and the "address" attribute will contain an email address or a url for the respective classes.

By overriding human_attribute_name in my subclasses I can make my error messages friendlier. If the method goes away, I'm not sure how I'd do it.

2

For example, I have an Address model with subclasses of EmailAddress and WebAddress and the "address" attribute will contain an email address or a url for the respective classes.

By overriding human_attribute_name in my subclasses I can make my error messages friendlier. If the method goes away, I'm not sure how I'd do it.

I don't know that there's any plan to remove this method, if you'd kept quiet it would probably have lived on forever ;). In the meantime I think we can view it as a 'hook' for customisation rather than as part of the stable API intended for surviving indefinitely.

3

I don't know that there's any plan to remove this method, if you'd kept quiet it would probably have lived on forever ;). In the

I considered that, but didn't want my code breaking when rails 2.3 came out :wink:

cheers.