Specifies the attributes that will be included in the output of the inspect method:

Post.attributes_for_inspect = [:id, :title]
Post.first.inspect #=> "#<Post id: 1, title: "Hello, World!">"

When set to ‘:all` inspect will list all the record’s attributes:

Post.attributes_for_inspect = :all
Post.first.inspect #=> "#<Post id: 1, title: "Hello, World!", published_at: "2023-10-23 14:28:11 +0000">"

Returns a fully resolved ActiveRecord::DatabaseConfigurations object.

Contains the database configuration - as is typically stored in config/database.yml - as an ActiveRecord::DatabaseConfigurations object.

For example, the following database.yml…

development:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: storage/development.sqlite3

production:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: storage/production.sqlite3

…would result in ActiveRecord::Base.configurations to look like this:

#<ActiveRecord::DatabaseConfigurations:0x00007fd1acbdf800 @configurations=[
  #<ActiveRecord::DatabaseConfigurations::HashConfig:0x00007fd1acbded10 @env_name="development",
    @name="primary", @config={adapter: "sqlite3", database: "storage/development.sqlite3"}>,
  #<ActiveRecord::DatabaseConfigurations::HashConfig:0x00007fd1acbdea90 @env_name="production",
    @name="primary", @config={adapter: "sqlite3", database: "storage/production.sqlite3"}>
]>

Returns the symbol representing the current setting for preventing writes.

ActiveRecord::Base.connected_to(role: :reading) do
  ActiveRecord::Base.current_preventing_writes #=> true
end

ActiveRecord::Base.connected_to(role: :writing) do
  ActiveRecord::Base.current_preventing_writes #=> false
end

Returns the symbol representing the current connected role.

ActiveRecord::Base.connected_to(role: :writing) do
  ActiveRecord::Base.current_role #=> :writing
end

ActiveRecord::Base.connected_to(role: :reading) do
  ActiveRecord::Base.current_role #=> :reading
end

Returns the symbol representing the current connected shard.

ActiveRecord::Base.connected_to(role: :reading) do
  ActiveRecord::Base.current_shard #=> :default
end

ActiveRecord::Base.connected_to(role: :writing, shard: :one) do
  ActiveRecord::Base.current_shard #=> :one
end

Specifies the maximum number of records that will be destroyed in a single background job by the dependent: :destroy_async association option. When nil (default), all dependent records will be destroyed in a single background job. If specified, the records to be destroyed will be split into multiple background jobs.

The job class used to destroy associations in the background.

Force enumeration of all columns in SELECT statements. e.g. SELECT first_name, last_name FROM ... instead of SELECT * FROM ... This avoids PreparedStatementCacheExpired errors when a column is added to the database while the app is running.

Accepts a logger conforming to the interface of Log4r or the default Ruby Logger class, which is then passed on to any new database connections made. You can retrieve this logger by calling logger on either an Active Record model class or an Active Record model instance.

New objects can be instantiated as either empty (pass no construction parameter) or pre-set with attributes but not yet saved (pass a hash with key names matching the associated table column names). In both instances, valid attribute keys are determined by the column names of the associated table – hence you can’t have attributes that aren’t part of the table columns.

Example

# Instantiates a single new object
User.new(first_name: 'Jamie')

Allows sort on objects

Returns true if comparison_object is the same exact object, or comparison_object is of the same type and self has an ID and it is equal to comparison_object.id.

Note that new records are different from any other record by definition, unless the other record is the receiver itself. Besides, if you fetch existing records with select and leave the ID out, you’re on your own, this predicate will return false.

Note also that destroying a record preserves its ID in the model instance, so deleted models are still comparable.

Identical to Ruby’s clone method. This is a “shallow” copy. Be warned that your attributes are not copied. That means that modifying attributes of the clone will modify the original, since they will both point to the same attributes hash. If you need a copy of your attributes hash, please use the dup method.

user = User.first
new_user = user.clone
user.name               # => "Bob"
new_user.name = "Joe"
user.name               # => "Joe"

user.object_id == new_user.object_id            # => false
user.name.object_id == new_user.name.object_id  # => true

user.name.object_id == user.dup.name.object_id  # => false

Duped objects have no id assigned and are treated as new records. Note that this is a “shallow” copy as it copies the object’s attributes only, not its associations. The extent of a “deep” copy is application specific and is therefore left to the application to implement according to its need. The dup method does not preserve the timestamps (created|updated)_(at|on) and locking column.

Populate coder with attributes about this record that should be serialized. The structure of coder defined in this method is guaranteed to match the structure of coder passed to the init_with method.

Example:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
end
coder = {}
Post.new.encode_with(coder)
coder # => {"attributes" => {"id" => nil, ... }}

Clone and freeze the attributes hash such that associations are still accessible, even on destroyed records, but cloned models will not be frozen.

Returns true if the attributes hash has been frozen.

Returns all attributes of the record as a nicely formatted string, ignoring .attributes_for_inspect.

Post.first.full_inspect
#=> "#<Post id: 1, title: "Hello, World!", published_at: "2023-10-23 14:28:11 +0000">"

Delegates to id in order to allow two records of the same type and id to work with something like:

[ Person.find(1), Person.find(2), Person.find(3) ] & [ Person.find(1), Person.find(4) ] # => [ Person.find(1) ]

Initialize an empty model object from coder. coder should be the result of previously encoding an Active Record model, using encode_with.

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
end

old_post = Post.new(title: "hello world")
coder = {}
old_post.encode_with(coder)

post = Post.allocate
post.init_with(coder)
post.title # => 'hello world'

Returns the attributes of the record as a nicely formatted string.

Post.first.inspect
#=> "#<Post id: 1, title: "Hello, World!", published_at: "2023-10-23 14:28:11 +0000">"

The attributes can be limited by setting .attributes_for_inspect.

Post.attributes_for_inspect = [:id, :title]
Post.first.inspect
#=> "#<Post id: 1, title: "Hello, World!">"

Takes a PP and prettily prints this record to it, allowing you to get a nice result from pp record when pp is required.

Prevents records from being written to the database:

customer = Customer.new
customer.readonly!
customer.save # raises ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord

customer = Customer.first
customer.readonly!
customer.update(name: 'New Name') # raises ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord

Read-only records cannot be deleted from the database either:

customer = Customer.first
customer.readonly!
customer.destroy # raises ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord

Please, note that the objects themselves are still mutable in memory:

customer = Customer.new
customer.readonly!
customer.name = 'New Name' # OK

but you won’t be able to persist the changes.

Returns true if the record is read only.

Returns a hash of the given methods with their names as keys and returned values as values.

topic = Topic.new(title: "Budget", author_name: "Jason")
topic.slice(:title, :author_name)
# => { "title" => "Budget", "author_name" => "Jason" }

Sets the record to strict_loading mode. This will raise an error if the record tries to lazily load an association.

NOTE: Strict loading is disabled during validation in order to let the record validate its association.

user = User.first
user.strict_loading! # => true
user.address.city
# => ActiveRecord::StrictLoadingViolationError
user.comments.to_a
# => ActiveRecord::StrictLoadingViolationError

Parameters

• value - Boolean specifying whether to enable or disable strict loading.

• :mode - Symbol specifying strict loading mode. Defaults to :all. Using :n_plus_one_only mode will only raise an error if an association that will lead to an n plus one query is lazily loaded.

Examples

user = User.first
user.strict_loading!(false) # => false
user.address.city # => "Tatooine"
user.comments.to_a # => [#<Comment:0x00...]

user.strict_loading!(mode: :n_plus_one_only)
user.address.city # => "Tatooine"
user.comments.to_a # => [#<Comment:0x00...]
user.comments.first.ratings.to_a
# => ActiveRecord::StrictLoadingViolationError

Returns true if the record is in strict_loading mode.

Returns true if the record uses strict_loading with :all mode enabled.

Returns true if the record uses strict_loading with :n_plus_one_only mode enabled.

Returns an array of the values returned by the given methods.

topic = Topic.new(title: "Budget", author_name: "Jason")
topic.values_at(:title, :author_name)
# => ["Budget", "Jason"]

+Array#flatten+ will call to_ary (recursively) on each of the elements of the array, and then rescues from the possible NoMethodError. If those elements are ActiveRecord::Base‘s, then this triggers the various method_missing’s that we have, which significantly impacts upon performance.

So we can avoid the method_missing hit by explicitly defining to_ary as nil here.

See also tenderlovemaking.com/2011/06/28/til-its-ok-to-return-nil-from-to_ary.html