attr_accessor default values

Question

I'm using rails and I want to make it so that attr_accessor :politics is set, by default, to false.

Does anyone know how to do this and is able to explain it in simple terms for me?

Answer 1

Rails has attr_accessor_with_default so you could write

class Like   attr_accessor_with_default :politics,false end  i = Like.new i.politics #=> false 

and thats all

UPDATE

attr_accessor_with_default has been deprecated in Rails 3.2.. you could do this instead with pure Ruby

class Like   attr_writer :politics    def politics     @politics || false   end end  i = Like.new i.politics #=> false 

Answer 2

You could use the virtus gem:

https://github.com/solnic/virtus

From the README:

Virtus allows you to define attributes on classes, modules or class instances with optional information about types, reader/writer method visibility and coercion behavior. It supports a lot of coercions and advanced mapping of embedded objects and collections.

It specifically supports default values.