On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 3:56 PM, James Byrne <li...@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
> Zach Dennis wrote:
>
>>
>> m = MyModel.new :name => "foo"
>> m["name"] # => "foo"
>>
>> http://www.railsbrain.com/api/rails-2.2.2/doc/index.html?a=M001972&name=[]
>>
>> On a different note, how about some better variable names?
>
> That code was for demonstration purposes for this question only.
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
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a = "name"
As Zach pointed out, you can access AR instance attributes like a hash:
my_instance[a] = "foobar"
my_instance[a.to_sym] # => "foobar"
the reason you can use either a symbol or a string is because the hash
access is done with a HashWithIndifferentAccess.
A couple other things you can do...
my_instance.send(a) # => "foobar"
It's important to view method calls as sending messages to objects in
Ruby... send is a method you can use to send a message to an object,
where the method name is known only at runtime.
eval "my_instance.#{a}"
and then of course you can eval strings...so if you have a var
containing the name, you can interpolate it into another string and
eval that.
I realize you didn't ask for all of that but I'm feeling a bit chatty.
Pat
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