CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyrspec
Soroush Hakami
Soroush Hakami

Reputation: 5396

How do I create a new attribute in a model?

Hi I'm new in ruby and rails and I want to create a new attribute email for the model Account. Down below is the test for my new attribute. The test is a copy of the name attribute test but i figured that they will be working in a similar way. 

it "should have a email field" do
  @account.email = "email"
  @account = save_and_reload(@account)
  @account.email.should == "email"
end

The only thing I've done to make the test pass is to create a email attribute in the account model. And I have also manually inserted a new column email in the database account table.

Here is part of the account model code where I've inserted the email attribute: 

class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :name, :logo, :account_preference_attributes,:email

When i run the test I get the error NoMethodError in 'Account should have a email field'

undefined method `email=' for #<Account:0xb6468ca8>

So how do I create a new attribute in the model?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1539

Answers (3)

zetetic
zetetic

Reputation: 47548

I think you're confusing attr_accessible with attr_accessor. The former is how Rails protects attributes from mass-assignment, while the latter is a Ruby directive which creates reader and writer methods for instance variables.

If you just want to use an instance variable in your model, use attr_accessor. If you want to create a persistent attribute, where the value gets stored to a column in the table, create a migration and add the column there.

Upvotes: 2

Bitterzoet
Bitterzoet

Reputation: 2792

I think the problem occurs because you've only changed it on your development database, tests run on a seperate database that gets reset everytime you run your testsuite.

Make a migration and then run the following command to migrate your test environment, or leave out the RAILS_ENV part to just do it for development:

rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=test

Upvotes: 1

Naren Sisodiya
Naren Sisodiya

Reputation: 7288

You have to create a migration to add email column into the table and run rake db:migrate

class AddSsl < ActiveRecord::Migration
 def self.up
   add_column :accounts, :email, :string
 end

 def self.down
   remove_column :accounts,:email
 end 
end

Also remove the email column from the table that you have manually added.

Upvotes: 2

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