Is there an easy way to make a Rails ActiveRecord model read-only?

Question

I want to be able to create a record in the DB but then prevent Rails from making changes from that point on. I understand changes will still be possible at the DB level.

Answer 1

This seems to be fairly effective and is probably a bit overkill, but for my case, I really want to be sure my application will never create, save, update, or destroy any records in the model, ever.

module ReadOnlyModel
  def readonly?() true end
  def create_or_update() raise ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord end
  before_create { raise ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord }
  before_destroy { raise ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord }
  before_save { raise ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord }
  before_update { raise ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord }
end

class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  include ReadOnlyModel
  # ...
end

Since OP asked to be able to create and destroy but not save or update I believe this will work

module SaveAndDestroyOnlyModel
  before_save { raise ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord }
  before_update { raise ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord }
end

class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  include SaveAndDestroyOnlyModel
  # ...
end

Not exactly the right exception, but close enough I think.