Question

I have a price attribute in my model.

Can I use attribute-getter, which is named just like the attribute

def price
   ... logic logic ..
   return something
end

in order to override the attribute itself ?

Currently it doesn’t work. If I call model.price it works, but when it somes to saving the object via model.save, it stores the default value.

Can it be done in a painless way, or should I make a before_save callback?

Answer 1

If you set a value in Ruby you access the setter method. If you want to override the setter you have to do something like this:

def price=(_price)
  # do some logic
  write_attribute(:price, _price)
end

This is of course a discussion point. Sometimes you can better use a callback. Something like this:

before_save :format_price

private

def format_price
  # Do some logic, for example make it cents.
  self.price = price * 100
end