Rails - Sep 2008 - Get an attribute's value without calling the AR get method

I want to override a get method to try to get a value from an associated
object first, and then get the object''s own value if the associated
object returned nil.  But, this requires me to avoid calling a get
method from inside the same get method.

To be specific: there are two classes, School and RegisteredInfo.
Normally, the RegisteredInfo class holds the official data for a school
- address, postcode, phone number etc, and in most cases a school
has_one registered info.  So, if i want to get the address for a school,
i normally pull it out of the associated RegisteredInfo object:

address = @school.registered_info.address

However, a school might not always have a registered info, and so has
its own address field for this purpose.  So, i want to make the address
method as follows:

#in school.rb

def address
  if self.registered_info
    return self.registered_info.address
  else
    return self.address
  end
end

However, this sets up a circular loop, where the method will keep
calling itself.  I''m sure that i''ve used a private/protected
method
called something like "read_attribute" that pulled the value out of
the
database without calling the get method again.  However, i can''t find
it
in the api (i''m using rails 2.0.2).

Can anyone help, or provide a nicer alternative to this problem?
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On 12 Sep 2008, at 11:33, Max Williams wrote:
>
>
> However, this sets up a circular loop, where the method will keep
> calling itself.  I''m sure that i''ve used a
private/protected method
> called something like "read_attribute" that pulled the value out
of
> the
> database without calling the get method again.  However, i can''t  
> find it
> in the api (i''m using rails 2.0.2).
read_attribute is still there even if it''s not documented. Or you can  
use self[:address]

Fred

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Frederick Cheung wrote:
> 
> read_attribute is still there even if it''s not documented. Or you
can
> use self[:address]
> 
> Fred
Fantastic - thanks Fred!
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