In Ruby on Rails can a scaffold field name contain more than one word

Question

In Ruby on Rails, if I want to use the scaffold generator, can I use a field name with more than 1 word i.e

'class name':text

As opposed to just

name:text

I have tried looking and also tried but cannot figure out if this is possible.

---

Additionally, if I want to generate a scaffold which would be called Class, I appear to be unable to do this - but I would like my users to see the word 'class' rather than whatever new name I am going to have to pick. Anyway around this?

Answer 1

Sure:

rails g migration Foo "bar baz":string

rake db:migrate # => SyntaxError

Oops. That generates a migration like this:

class CreateFoos < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    create_table :foos do |t|
      t.string :bar baz

      t.timestamps
    end
  end
end

Obviously that won't work. You can fix it by wrapping the symbol in quotes:

t.string :"bar baz"

Now the migration works, but can we use the model?

> f = Foo.new
> f.bar baz # nope
> f."bar baz" # nope
> f.send("bar baz") # Yay!

How to change the value?

> f.send("bar baz=", "wtf") # OK
> f.send("bar baz") # => "wtf"

So in a very narrow, technical sense, yes you can do this. But you shouldn't.

I would like my users to see the word 'class' rather than whatever new name I am going to have to pick

You can always use a different method (i.e., an alias) for user-facing code to display a column or model name. This can be as simple as defining your own method on a model, or using a helper function, or a decorator class. You definitely want to avoid using terms that Ruby and Rails use (like Class).