How to set default values in Rails?

Question

I\'m trying to find the best way to set default values for objects in Rails.

The best I can think of is to set the default value in the new method in

Answer 1

First of all you can't overload initialize(*args) as it's not called in all cases.

Your best option is to put your defaults into your migration:

add_column :accounts, :max_users, :integer, :default => 10

Second best is to place defaults into your model but this will only work with attributes that are initially nil. You may have trouble as I did with boolean columns:

def after_initialize
  if new_record?
    max_users ||= 10
  end
end

You need the new_record? so the defaults don't override values loaded from the datbase.

You need ||= to stop Rails from overriding parameters passed into the initialize method.