Let's say you're in your user controller and you want to change the name a @user based on some params you have available to you.
I want to know if there is any difference between the following:
@user.name = params[:user][:name]
or
@user.assign_attributes({:name=> params[:user][:name]})
Thanks in advance!
A great way to figure out questions like this is to dive into the source. I found the method in activerecord/lib/active_record/attribute_assignment.rbCheck it out here.
The assign_attributes method will actually just loop through the parameters given and sends the :name= message to your model. However, because you are possibly assigning many attributes, it takes into account mass-assignment precautions. (ie. make sure that the attribute is listed as attr_accessible).
The = (e.g. @user.name = params[:user][:name]) directly calls the attribute setter with no security check. The assign_attributes checks security for the values passed in.
From the Rails API for assign_attributes:
Allows you to set all the attributes for a particular mass-assignment security role by passing in a hash of attributes with keys matching the attribute names (which again matches the column names) and the role name using the :as option.
