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

The suggestion to override new/initialize is probably incomplete. Rails will (frequently) call allocate for ActiveRecord objects, and calls to allocate won't result in calls to initialize.

If you're talking about ActiveRecord objects, take a look at overriding after_initialize.

These blog posts (not mine) are useful:

Default values Default constructors not called

[Edit: SFEley points out that Rails actually does look at the default in the database when it instantiates a new object in memory - I hadn't realized that.]