attr_accessor, not able to access property

Question

This is probably very stupid question but here we go

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
 attr_accessor :group_id
end

From irb

Answer 1

Looks like group_id is already a property on your Foo object (shown by the fact that it returns 106 when attr_accessor is omitted). By adding attr_accessor you are overriding what's already there and creating a method reader and writer called group_id. The return of the newly defined group_id is nil since you don't define anything.

Conceptually, you're ending up with something like this:

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
  def group_id  # overriding previous definition of 'group_id'
    nil
  end
end

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Edit:

If your goal is expose properties then yes, use attr_accessible