Question

I have an active record model and want a way to have an attribute that gets passed in on creation but isn’t a row in the database. Basically, it will determine whether a logging record gets created in another table.

I was thinking something like this:

Item.create!({:header_id => 17, :header => 'here is my value', :position => 13.125, :created_from_inventory => true }) 

The :created_from_inventory doesn’t exist in db but will be used in a callback.

Any ideas on how to do this?

thx

Answer 1

Try adding this to the item model

attr_accessor :created_from_inventory

It will add a non db attribute to your model. It will exist as long as the instance exists. once the instance goes out of scope it will be lost.