Question

I have a User model that acts_as_authentic for AuthLogic’s password management. AuthLogic adds “password” and “password_confirmation” attributes over top of the db-backed “crypted_password” attribute. This is pretty standard AuthLogic stuff.

I want to have a method that sets both password and password_confirmation at the same time (useful for internal applications where I’m not worried about typos). To do this I created a new method in User:

#user.rb
def password_and_confirm=(value)
  password = value
  password_confirmation = value
end

However calling this method does not seem to actually set the password:

user = User.new
user.password = "test"
user.password               # => "test"
user.crypted_password       # => a big base64 string, as expected

user = User.new
user.password_and_confirm = "test"
user.password               # => nil
user.crypted_password       # => nil

I also tried a different route:

def internal_password(value)
  password = value
end

…and got the same problem.

Why can’t I set the password attribute from within a method inside the User class?

Answer 1

Better try this:

#user.rb
def password_and_confirm=(value)
  self.password = value
  self.password_confirmation = value
end

Otherwise ruby tries to treat the methods (as it is implemented as such) as local variables (this has precedence during assignment operations).