Disclaimer: This is (a version of) a message that I sent some time ago to rubyonrails-talk. It didn''t get much attention there and since it is about a ticket/patch, I am posting it here to. ----------------------- I have stumbled across an issue with FormHelper#text_field and thought it was worth a patch. The ticket (with patch) is here http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/6908 It seems like my solution can''t be applied because the form helper methods really needs to use the *_before_type_cast methods because of numerical attributes. (By the way, the actionpack tests do not show that yet) The thing is that the problem hit something inside me and I got thinking: should we really try to override the default attribute accessors? I mean, there are .read and .write_attributes for those of us who want to, but should we? What I was originally trying to have was something like def title result = read_attribute(:title) return title_from_name || PLACE_HOLDER_TITLE.t if result.nil? || result.empty? return result end (Rough translation: in case there isn''t a title, generate a default one based on the name) But, because of the before_type_cast issue, I had to use something along these lines def title; title_before_type_cast; end def title_before_type_cast result = read_attribute(:title) return title_from_name || PLACE_HOLDER_TITLE.t if result.nil? || result.empty? return result end The thing is that the problem hit something inside me and I got ...and that hurts. A lot! Not to mention that it may have introduced some subtle bugs that will come back to haunt me in the future. As an alternative solution, I could also have tried renaming the db column to db_title or something, but that doesn''t seem right either. I thought about using something like validates_*, but this isn''t really a validation. We are just providing some sample data that would be tedious for the user to enter in many cases. So, what do you guys think? Being as opinionated as Rails is, is it just preventing me from doing something I shouldn''t be doing to myself? Or am I missing a more applicable solution? Cheers, Thiago Arrais --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Core" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-core@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-core-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-core?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---