Question

I am trying to set my own method to override a database property, so that I can intercept the value where the database value is null.

Rails seems to allow me to set a method with the same name as a database column, however I would need an alternative way to access the database value to return what I want.

Imagine I have a database column “date”, and I want to set that to something else when it is null in the database.

I would like to set a method as below

def date
 if (alternative_db_value_object).date == nil
  "Put this"
 else
  "Put that"
 end
end

Alternatively I would greatly appreciate if anyone could suggest a better way of doing this.

Answer 1

.. within the ‘date’ method, you can either use

self[:date]

or

read_attribute(:date)

UPDATE: it seems this doesn’t work anymore on rails 5. One is supposed to use super:

def length=(minutes)
  super(minutes.to_i * 60)
end

def length
  super / 60
end