update_attributes(attributes) public

Updates all the attributes from the passed-in Hash and saves the record. If the object is invalid, the saving will fail and false will be returned.

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August 27, 2008
12 thanks

Only attr_accessible attributes will be updated

If your model specified attr_accessible attributes, only those attributes will be updated.

Use attr_accessible to prevent mass assignment (by users) of attributes that should not be editable by a user. Mass assignment is used in create and update methods of your standard controller.

For a normal user account, for example, you only want login and password to be editable by a user. It should not be possible to change the status attribute through mass assignment. 

  class User < ActiveRecord::Base
    attr_accessible :login, :password
  end

So, doing the following will merrily return true, but will not update the status attribute. 

  @user.update_attributes(:status => 'active')

If you want to update the status attribute, you should assign it separately. 

  @user.status = 'active'
  save
August 14, 2008
4 thanks

Calls attribute setter for each key/value in the hash

This is a convenience to set multiple attributes at the same time. It calls the "setter" method 

  self.attribute=(value)

for each key in the hash. If you have overridden the setter to add functionality, it will be called.

This also allows you to create non-table attributes that affect the record. For instance, a full_name=() method could parse the string and set the first_name=() and last_name() accordingly.

June 17, 2009
3 thanks

Skipping validation

Unlike the save method, you can’t pass false to update_attributes to tell it to skip validation. Should you wish to do this (consider carefully if this is wise) update the attributes explicitly then call save and pass false: 

  @model_name.attributes = params[:model_name]
  @model_name.save false