There are several issues with each of the available methods, but I believe that defining an after_initialize
callback is the way to go for the following reasons:
default_scope
will initialize values for new models, but then that will become the scope on which you find the model. If you just want to initialize some numbers to 0 then this is not what you want.
- Defining defaults in your migration also works part of the time... As has already been mentioned this will not work when you just call Model.new.
- Overriding
initialize
can work, but don't forget to call super
!
- Using a plugin like phusion's is getting a bit ridiculous. This is ruby, do we really need a plugin just to initialize some default values?
- Overriding
after_initialize
is deprecated as of Rails 3. When I override after_initialize
in rails 3.0.3 I get the following warning in the console:
DEPRECATION WARNING: Base#after_initialize has been deprecated, please use Base.after_initialize :method instead. (called from /Users/me/myapp/app/models/my_model:15)
Therefore I'd say write an after_initialize
callback, which lets you default attributes in addition to letting you set defaults on associations like so:
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :address
after_initialize :init
def init
self.number ||= 0.0 #will set the default value only if it's nil
self.address ||= build_address #let's you set a default association
end
end
Now you have just one place to look for initialization of your models. I'm using this method until someone comes up with a better one.
Caveats:
For boolean fields do:
self.bool_field = true if self.bool_field.nil?
See Paul Russell's comment on this answer for more details
If you're only selecting a subset of columns for a model (ie; using select
in a query like Person.select(:firstname, :lastname).all
) you will get a MissingAttributeError
if your init
method accesses a column that hasn't been included in the select
clause. You can guard against this case like so:
self.number ||= 0.0 if self.has_attribute? :number
and for a boolean column...
self.bool_field = true if (self.has_attribute? :bool_value) && self.bool_field.nil?
Also note that the syntax is different prior to Rails 3.2 (see Cliff Darling's comment below)
You can specify formal arguments in rake by adding symbol arguments to the task call. For example:
require 'rake'
task :my_task, [:arg1, :arg2] do |t, args|
puts "Args were: #{args} of class #{args.class}"
puts "arg1 was: '#{args[:arg1]}' of class #{args[:arg1].class}"
puts "arg2 was: '#{args[:arg2]}' of class #{args[:arg2].class}"
end
task :invoke_my_task do
Rake.application.invoke_task("my_task[1, 2]")
end
# or if you prefer this syntax...
task :invoke_my_task_2 do
Rake::Task[:my_task].invoke(3, 4)
end
# a task with prerequisites passes its
# arguments to it prerequisites
task :with_prerequisite, [:arg1, :arg2] => :my_task #<- name of prerequisite task
# to specify default values,
# we take advantage of args being a Rake::TaskArguments object
task :with_defaults, :arg1, :arg2 do |t, args|
args.with_defaults(:arg1 => :default_1, :arg2 => :default_2)
puts "Args with defaults were: #{args}"
end
Then, from the command line:
> rake my_task[1,false]
Args were: {:arg1=>"1", :arg2=>"false"} of class Rake::TaskArguments
arg1 was: '1' of class String
arg2 was: 'false' of class String
> rake "my_task[1, 2]"
Args were: {:arg1=>"1", :arg2=>"2"}
> rake invoke_my_task
Args were: {:arg1=>"1", :arg2=>"2"}
> rake invoke_my_task_2
Args were: {:arg1=>3, :arg2=>4}
> rake with_prerequisite[5,6]
Args were: {:arg1=>"5", :arg2=>"6"}
> rake with_defaults
Args with defaults were: {:arg1=>:default_1, :arg2=>:default_2}
> rake with_defaults['x','y']
Args with defaults were: {:arg1=>"x", :arg2=>"y"}
As demonstrated in the second example, if you want to use spaces, the quotes around the target name are necessary to keep the shell from splitting up the arguments at the space.
Looking at the code in rake.rb, it appears that rake does not parse task strings to extract arguments for prerequisites, so you can't do task :t1 => "dep[1,2]"
. The only way to specify different arguments for a prerequisite would be to invoke it explicitly within the dependent task action, as in :invoke_my_task
and :invoke_my_task_2
.
Note that some shells (like zsh) require you to escape the brackets: rake my_task\['arg1'\]
Best Answer
Here's how you should do it:
But some databases, like PostgreSQL, will not update the field for rows previously created, so make sure you update the field manaully on the migration too.