Difference between self.attribute_name and only attribute_name

Question

Suppose There is a model User with email attribute. I have check in some of the tutorials that we can use self.email and email alone. So what is the difference in both ?

Take a look at this post http://stackoverflow.com/questions/386115/to-use-self-or-not-in-rails All is explained there — Aleks, Mar 22 '13 at 11:26

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 22 '13 at 11:21

If you are in an instance method within the User model then either will work, but email on its own is an implicit scope definition - meaning that the application will look for a local email variable, then an email method/attribute. self.email explicitly skips the search for a local variable.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 22 '13 at 11:27

You can access email from different ways when you are on the User class.

self.email when you are in the User scope
a_user.email when you have specified a user
email when you are in the User class. This is valid for every method in the User class.
@email, the variable returned by the email function
attributes[:email] the ActiveRecord attribute.

All of this methods are automatically generated by the ActiveRecord model, you can see the doc for more details.

Difference between self.attribute_name and only attribute_name

2 Answers2