From: "C. Dagnon" <c-soc-rubyforum@...>
Date: 2009-05-03T00:24:30+09:00
Subject: Help me understand 'self' vs current object

I'm pretty mystified by this, so I would appreciate any insights...
This does involve a Rails/ActiveRecord object, but that shouldn't matter
here, right?

I'm archiving an object when it gets deleted, so I'm chaining methods in
a Rails controller:
        triplet.archive(@user.id).as_delete.save

But I checked the database and the flag never got reset from false.  I
added some print statements to as_delete() to get this:

class ArchiveTriplet < ActiveRecord::Base
  def as_delete
    puts "MARKING: #{is_deleted}"
    is_deleted = true
    puts "MARKED: #{is_deleted}/#{self.is_deleted}"
    return self
  end
end

With an additional debug after as_delete() the log shows:
  MARKING: false
  MARKED: true/false
  ARCHIVING: #[ArchiveTriplet..., is_deleted: false, ...]

What?!

The easy solution is to change is_deleted everywhere to self.is_deleted,
but am I misunderstanding what 'self' is supposed to be?  Is there
another keyword which means what I've been lead to believe 'self' should
mean?  (ie. 'this' in Java)

Thanks,

-Chris
using: ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]
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