so i have a model named item that has a column named price. I assumed that columns would be stored as instance variables inside models but the method
def price
@price
end
returns nothing. so my question is how do i access price from inside the model?
extra info my reason for doing this is items sometimes have specials so i want a method price that checks for specials and changes the price if a special is active and leaves it alone if not, something like
def price
check_for_special
@price
end
ActiveRecord automatically generates the setter and getter methods associated with a database field. price will be the getter method for the field of the same name.
By adding a price method you have overwritten the method created by ActiveRecord. As you are overwritting an existing method, you can access the original method by calling super. So you could to this:
def price
check_for_special
super
end
However, I'd not recommend doing that, as you usually need a method of just getting the price value, without it always calling another method. So
def price_with_check
check_for_special
price
end