Why use “self” to access ActiveRecord/Rails model properties?

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Often the use of self is to force Ruby to recognize that as a method call and not mis-interpret it as a variable. Without prior knowledge of a method called day=, then day = "x" looks to Ruby like a variable assignment. self.day = "x" is always a method call.

The reason this is trouble is because the name and name= methods are added dynamically after the User class file has been parsed. The first thing Rails does when using a model is make methods for the associated database fields, but this happens after your user.rb file is parsed.

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