alias_method on ActiveRecord::Base results in NameError

Question

I have a model inheriting directly from ActiveResource::Base, and I'm trying to run alias_method for most of the columns in the record's table, but the result is a NameError:

NameError: undefined method address_line_1' for class LeadImport::Base'

Yet I can access the attribute:

LeadImport::Base.new.address_line_1 #=> nil (not error)

My class has a table column named address_line_1, so I fail to see the problem.

class LeadImport::Base < ActiveRecord::Base
    alias_method :address_1, :address_line_1
end

specs: Ruby 1.8.7, Rails 2.3.8

Answer 1

According a site I found, you're supposed to use alias_attribute instead:

The problem is that ActiveRecord doesn't create the accessor methods on the fly until the database connection is live and it has parsed the table schema. That's a long time after the class has been loaded.

class LeadImport::Base < ActiveRecord::Base
  alias_attribute :address_1, :address_line_1
end