Hey, it’s been a while I posted here.
So what’s the purpose ? I commonly use script/console to debug my rails applications. Today I wanted to see the values of my custom attributes model without typing model.custom_attribute. So I took a look at ActiveRecord::Base#inspect method. and the default inspect method shows me database fields. Well, let’s do some work to inspect custom attributes.
Say you have a users table with some fields : login,name,encrypted_password.
class User < ActiveRecord::Base attr_accessor :heroic_action end
superman = User.find(1).inspect superman.heroic_action = "Save the widow and the orphan" pp superman.inspect "#<User login: "Superman", name: "Clark Kent", encrypted_password: "da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709">"
Well I also want to know what heroic_action is superman doing. So i have to overwrite inspect method but I would like a DRY solution. That’s why I wrote this code :
EDIT: Just a small change to have inheritance work.
require 'active_support/core_ext/class' module InspectableAttributes def self.included(base) base.class_inheritable_array :inspectable_attributes , :instance_writer => false base.extend(ClassMethods) base.inspectable_attributes = [] base.class_eval do def inspect inspected_values = respond_to?(:attributes_before_type_cast) ? attributes_before_type_cast.map{|k,v| "#{k.to_s}: #{v.inspect}" } : [] inspected_values.concat(self.class.inspectable_attributes.map { |attr| "#{attr}: #{send(attr).inspect}" }) "#<#{self.class.name} #{inspected_values.join(', ')}>" end end end module ClassMethods def inspectable_attr_accessor(*args) attr_accessor(*args) self.inspectable_attributes |= args.map(&:to_s) end end end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base include InspectableAttributes inspectable_attr_accessor :heroic_action end
That’s what I was looking for !!!
superman = User.find(1).inspect superman.heroic_action = "Save the widow and the orphan" pp superman.inspect "#<User login: "Superman", name: "Clark Kent", encrypted_password: "da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709", heroic_action: "Save the widow and the orphan">"
Note that this code can be used in any ruby code requiring ‘active_support/core_ext/class’.
