attr_private

attr_private is a way to hide fields on an ActiveRecord model such that they are inaccessible to external callers. fields declared private are protected from most access methods provided by AR. Attempts to access a private field will raise a NoMethodError as though the field did not exist.

Using attr_private

app/models/my_model.rb

  class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
    attr_private :my_field, :some_other_field
  end

Limitations

Currently, attr_private doesn’t prevent reading via the attributes hash.

Special Thanks To

• reQall for letting me hack in Ruby
• Evan Light for pushing me to make this a gem (my first!)