Get specific attributes from an ActiveRecord model

Question

Let\'s say that I have a User model with attributes :id, :first_name, :last_name, and :email. In my application, guest users shouldn\'t see User\

Answer 1

Had a requirement like this but wanted something more generic that would just gather a list of method names and values from a model (including attributes). So, I added this method to my model:

  def attributes_from_keys(*keys)
    keys.inject({}) do |hash_to_return, key|
      hash_to_return.merge(key => send(key))
    end
  end

Then, call this method with:

MyModel.find(1).attributes_from_keys(:id, :name, :age)

returns

{id: 1, name: 'Lawrence', age: 23}