Stupid mistakes and helpful hints

I'm English. Which means I spell English and not Yank.

This also means that I waste hours of my precious time wondering why my constructor is not working when in fact I have written

 def initialise(params = nil)
   super
   do_whatever
 end

Spot the error?

When using Single Table Inheritance and overriding validate, don't forget to call super in your descendant class, otherwise validate doesn't get called in your super-class. Obvious but it has caught me out.

And lastly, if you are using attr_accessor to create "temporary" attributes and you want to use validations on them, you will find you get a "NoMethodError: undefined method `my_attribute_before_type_cast' for Whatever". However, the following method (adapted from Rails Recipes - recipe 64) will fix it:

 def method_missing(symbol, *params)
   if (symbol.to_s =~ /^(.*)_before_type_cast$/)
     send $1
   else
     super
   end
 end

Basically, any method call ending in "_before_type_cast" will be re-sent without the suffix - so calling your temporary accessor itself.

Incidentally, I can't get Recipe 64 to work with Rails 1.1.6 (not tried with Rails 1.2.1), which is why I came up with the Pseudo-Model trick.