Soh Dubom wrote: > What I'm trying to explain is that through a web interface I can > access web form variables (password, username etc) using the @ sign, eg > : @password, or params[:password], but I'm just using the rails console > trying to interact with a ruby class, can I do that?
@password in a controller/view and params[:password] have nothing to do with the password attribute of your User model unless you explicitly assign them to. So you might do something like this in a controller: user = User.create(:password => params[:password]) But, all that does 'under the covers' is call user.password=(params[:password]) If the user class is `class User << ActiveRecord::Base`, then it will inherit all sorts of fancy rails behaviour. One such behaviour is that if there is the users table has a column named 'password', then your user objects 'automatically' get a method called 'password='. However, if you overwrite this method (with `def password=`) then you can cause unexpected problems if you do it wrong. So the User model inherits from ActiveRecord:Base, and if you have a 'password' column, and if you don't overwrite `def password` or `def password=`, then you should be able to do this in the rails console: user = User.new(:password => 'secret') puts user.password # => secret user.password = 'hidden' puts user.password # => hidden user.save # => true (unless you have validation on this model) That last line will actually write your values to the database (and create the new database record). I should also note, that although most attributes will work just like I explained above (i.e. all those assumptions I made are true), with password fields they usually won't work. This is because in order to be more secure, password fields use all sorts of encryption methods. Many of these will overwrite `def password=`. A very good example of this is RESTFul Authentication (look it up on GitHub). Overall, I would HIGHLY recommend that you read a book like Ruby for Rails by David Black. This is the best book I can think of that will help you learn about how Rails uses Ruby to do all this cool stuff. HTH --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
