Different ways to set attributes in ActiveRecord

Emanuel

October 06, 2016Software engineer at makandra GmbH

Rails 5 / 6 / 7

Method	Uses Default Accessor	Saves to Database	Runs Validations	Runs Callbacks	Updates updated_at/updated_on	Respects Readonly
`attribute=`	Yes	No	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
`attributes=`	Yes	No	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
`assign_attributes`	Yes	No	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
`write_attribute`	No	No	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
`[]=`	No	No	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
`update`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
`update_attribute`	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
`update_attributes`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
`update_column`	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
`update_columns`	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
`User.update`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
`User.update_all`	No	Yes	No	No	No	No

Note that update_attributes is no longer available on Rails 7 (it was only an alias to update before anyway).

Rails 4

Method	Uses Default Accessor	Saved to Database	Validations	Callbacks	Touches updated_at	Readonly check
`attribute=`	Yes	No	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
`write_attribute`	No	No	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
`update_attribute`	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
`attributes=`	Yes	No	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
`update`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
`update_column`	No	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
`update_columns`	No	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
`User.update`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
`User.update_all`	No	Yes	No	No	No	No

Rails 3

Method	Uses Default Accessor	Mass Assignment Protection	Saved to Database	Validations
`attribute=`	Yes	No	No	n/a
`write_attribute`	No	No	No	n/a
`update_attribute`	Yes	No	Yes	No
`attributes=`	Yes	Yes*	No	n/a
`update_attributes`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

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* Mass Assignment Protection for attributes= is overridable.

Further reading: update_attributes vs. update_attribute in ActiveRecord

davidverhasselt.com

License for source code

Emanuel

October 06, 2016Software engineer at makandra GmbH

Posted by Emanuel to makandra dev (2016-10-06 09:45)