methods generated for an AR field: what do they do?

rubyonrails-talk
1

If my table reads like this:

    create_table(:pet_owners, :force => true) do |t|       t.boolean :has_allergies     end

... then ActiveRecord::Base generates the following methods:

:has_allergies :has_allergies= :has_allergies? :has_allergies_before_type_cast :has_allergies_change :has_allergies_changed? :has_allergies_was :has_allergies_will_change! :reset_has_allergies!

The first four I recognize from the documentation. But what about the remaining five? If they do what I *think* they do, they could be useful. But I'd prefer not use trial and error to find out if I could RTFM instead.

So: Where are they documented (other than in the source code)?

2

Following might be useful.

http://ar.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Dirty.html

http://ryandaigle.com/articles/2008/3/31/what-s-new-in-edge-rails-dirty-objects http://railscasts.com/episodes/109-tracking-attribute-changes

3

waseem ahmad wrote in post #1017743:

Following might be useful. http://ar.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Dirty.html

Got that, and I notice that those are all vintage 2008. But I also note that in:

  ActiveRecord::Dirty - APIdock

... that ActiveRecord::Dirty "...is deprecated or moved on the latest stable version." Is there another mechanism I should be using for tracking changes to fields?

4

waseem ahmad wrote in post #1017743:

> Following might be useful. >http://ar.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Dirty.html

Got that, and I notice that those are all vintage 2008. But I also note that in:

ActiveRecord::Dirty - APIdock

... that ActiveRecord::Dirty "...is deprecated or moved on the latest stable version." Is there another mechanism I should be using for tracking changes to fields?

The guts were moved into ActiveModel, but you can use it with active record just like you used too. There was some fairly major refactoring in rails 3 which confuses apidock quite a bit.

Fred

5

Frederick Cheung wrote in post #1017751:

The guts were moved into ActiveModel, but you can use it with active record just like you used too. There was some fairly major refactoring in rails 3 which confuses apidock quite a bit.

Word.

I eventually found the more modern docs for ActiveModel::Dirty -- it explains a bit more of what's going on:

  ActiveModel::Dirty

Now it's clear that ActiveRecord includes ActiveModel::Dirty. Thanks, all.