So I went ahead and tried to make use of this in my object model. Here are the important parts of the model.


class Episode < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :field_values, :dependent => :destroy
accepts_nested_attributes_for :field_values, :allow_destroy => true
end

class FieldValue < ActiveRecord::Base
:belongs_to :episode
end

class TextFieldValue < FieldValue
end

class NumberFieldValue < FieldValue
end


Since I am using Single Table Inheritance I end up with a field_values table that has a column named “type” which contain either a value of “TextFieldValue” or “NumberFieldValue”.

Also, because I enabled accepts_nested_attributes_for on my Episode class I should be able to do something like:


episode.field_values_attributes =
[{:value => “foo”, :type => “TextFieldValue”}]


However, when I look in the DB I see that there is a new row but the “type” column is NULL even though I set it to “TextFieldValue”. When I look in the logs I see: “Can’t mass-assign these protected attributes: type”.

Luckily, there is a way around this. I added a setter called “value_type” to my FieldValue class.


def value_type= value_type
self.type = value_type
end


Now, when I can safely use field_values_attributes and set a type.


episode.field_values_attributes =
[{:value => “foo”, :value_type => “TextFieldValue”}]


create_table "podcasts", :force => true do |t|
t.string "name"
t.boolean "use_show_name", :default => true
t.integer "show_id"
end

As you can see above that each podcast belongs to a show. I also have a form for this model and in the name field I want to display the name of the podcast unless “use_show_name” is true then I want to display the name of the show that this podcast belongs to.

<%= text_field :podcast, :name, :class => "text", :disabled => @podcast.use_show_name %>

I don’t want to put this logic in the ERB template but instead I want to put it in the model so that anyone that calls Podcast.name will get the appropriate value depending on the “use_show_name”.

class Podcast < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :show
 
def name
return self.use_show_name ? self.show.name : read_attribute(:name)
end
alias_method :name_before_type_cast, :name
end

So there a few things going on above.

• We override the “name” method by simply implementing it. This works because ActiveRecord using method_missing to implement it’s “name” getter but since there is now a “name” method, method_missing will not be invoked.
• In the method we check “use_show_name” to see what value to return.  If it is true we get the value from the show object.  Otherwise, we call read_attribute to get the value of the name attribute that stored in the DB.
• Lastly, we alias the name method as “name_before_type_cast” since this is the method that is called by FormHelper.text_field.  ActiveRecord form helpers call the before_type_cast so that they can get the string value of the attribute but we want it to get the value from our “name” method.