Why isn’t self always needed in ruby / rails / activerecord?

by

This is because attributes/associations are actually methods(getters/setters) and not local variables. When you state “parent = value” Ruby assumes you want to assign the value to the local variable parent.

Somewhere up the stack there’s a setter method “def parent=” and to call that you must use “self.parent = ” to tell ruby that you actually want to call a setter and not just set a local variable.

When it comes to getters Ruby looks to see if there’s a local variable first and if can’t find it then it tries to find a method with the same name which is why your getter method works without “self”.

In other words it’s not the fault of Rails, but it’s how Ruby works inherently.

More Related Contents:

  1. Regex for reverse match a string
  2. How to make a HTTP request using Ruby on Rails?
  3. Rails 3: Get Random Record
  4. Instance variable: self vs @
  5. When to use `self.foo` instead of `foo` in Ruby methods
  6. cannot load such file — script/rails : Getting this error while remote debugging through RubyMine
  7. Rails 3, has_one / has_many with lambda condition
  8. Safe ActiveRecord like query
  9. How do I create a class instance from a string name in ruby?
  10. In Rails, how to add a new method to String class?
  11. Resque vs Sidekiq? [closed]
  12. How to get class instances in Ruby? [duplicate]
  13. Ruby Definition of Self
  14. What is Ruby’s double-colon `::`?
  15. Using do block vs braces {}
  16. How to generate a random string in Ruby
  17. Trying to learn / understand Ruby setter and getter methods
  18. How do I copy a hash in Ruby?
  19. Is there a “do … while” loop in Ruby?
  20. what is the functionality of “&: ” operator in ruby? [duplicate]
  21. What does ‘Monkey Patching’ exactly Mean in Ruby?
  22. Ruby regular expression using variable name
  23. When is `eval` in Ruby justified?
  24. How can I install a local gem?
  25. How to convert a string or integer to binary in Ruby?
  26. What is the easiest way to remove the first character from a string?
  27. When to use `require`, `load` or `autoload` in Ruby?
  28. Natural Language Processing in Ruby [closed]
  29. How can I get the absolute URL when extracting links using Nokogiri?
  30. What is the behavior when using both positional and keyword arguments in Ruby?

Leave a Comment