It smells. Rethink your code design.
Code example with makandra/has_defaults Show archive.org snapshot :
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_defaults tags: []          # field in db
  has_defaults virtual_tags: []  # no db field
  
  def all_tags
    virtual_tags + tags
  end
  
end
> Post.new.virtual_tags
=> []   # ✔
> Post.find(1).virtual_tags
=> nil   # ☹
> Post.find(1).all_tags
=> Error: undefined method '+' for nil:NilClass
Posted by Martin Straub to makandra dev (2015-09-04 15:37)