CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubymethodsruby-on-rails-4attributes
user502052
user502052

Reputation: 15257

How to provide more functionality for attribute methods?

I am using Ruby on Rails 4 and I would like to provide more functionality for attribute methods. That is:

Given I have the following model class

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  ...
end

And given Article instances have the following attribute methods

@article.title   # => "Sample title"
@article.content # => "Sample content"

Then I would like to add to Article functionality as like the following:

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  def title(args)
    # Some logic...

    self.title
  end

  def content(args)
    # Some logic...

    self.content
  end
end

@article.title(args)
@article.content(args)

Is the above approach safe / correct / valid? Will I have issues?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 38

Answers (2)

xlembouras
xlembouras

Reputation: 8295

I would suggest that you read 7 Patterns to Refactor Fat ActiveRecord Models. What you want can be a nice decorator or value object.

class Title
  def initialize(article)
    @article = article
  end

  def weird_title
    some_logic
  end
end

and when the weird_title is needed on an article article_1

Title(article_1).weird_title

Thus you have a good code separation (OOP style) and you keep your model clean.

Upvotes: 0

Surya
Surya

Reputation: 16002

You're overriding title and content methods, and as far as I know this approach isn't safe at all. Like, having getter and setter methods is a completely different story. But, this pattern will confuse you and other developers after some time.

And if I'm right(correct me if I'm wrong, please), you must get wrong number of arguments (0 for 1) error for title and content at line number where you have:

self.title and self.content when you do:

@article.title(args)
@article.content(args)

Upvotes: 1

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