So is the way I'm doing it right? Or just a way I happened to hack it to work?
The way my code was looking was basically: Page.new(:url => 'http://www.yahoo.com') class Page < ActiveRecord::Base attr_accessible :url, :title after_initialize :parse_page_params def parse_page_params @title = "test" end and this wasn't working... I understand what you said above about the instance variables, methods, initializing, etc.. but still a little unclear about why that code doesn't work as I'm setting it. Is it because Rails uses the method name of title which hasn't been initailized in my assignment above? On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Walter Lee Davis <[email protected]>wrote: > > On Dec 21, 2012, at 12:37 PM, Dan Brooking wrote: > > > I posted a previous message about overriding initialize... because I was > having issues setting some of the parameters. I have a Page model that has: > > > > attr_accessible :url, :title, :doc, :domain > > > > and it's called via: > > > > Page.new(:url => 'http://www.yahoo.com') > > > > Since I'm only passing in the url to new, I needed to set the other > parameters. I was trying to do this via an after_initialize callback which > wasn't working so tried overriding initialize... still not working. > > > > What I found out was that in my after_initialize, I was referring to > title as @title which is why it was not working. I switched it to > self.title and it works fine. > > > > My question is - why? > > @title is an instance variable. Until you set it, it doesn't exist. Having > a method on the model called title (or an accessor, or some other Rails > magick) does not instantiate that method's return until and unless you ask > for it by calling the method. Calling self.method_name just makes it clear > which same-named method you really mean. Self is implied much of the time, > but when you have all the many method_missing options available, it might > not be the first one such that gets called. > > Walter > > > > > -- > > 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]. > > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rubyonrails-talk/-/-ncNakybQ-cJ. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > > > > -- > 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 https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- 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 https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
