= Active Record Defaults

If you find this plugin useful, please consider a donation to show your support!

  http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_send-money
  
  Email address: jonathan.viney@gmail.com
  
== Instructions

Allow you to easily specify default values for attributes on new model objects. Eg:

  class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
    defaults :country => 'New Zealand', :type => 'Unknown', :address => proc { Address.new }
    
    default :last_name do |person|
      person.first_name
    end
  end
  
The default value is only used if the attribute is not present in the attributes hash.

Note that the defaults are evaluated when the model is loaded, so if a default is meant to
be dynamic, such as today's date, it must be put inside a proc.

  class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
    default :today => Date.today          # WRONG
    default :today => proc { Date.today } # RIGHT
  end
  
Interestingly, because the model classes are reloaded for every request in development mode, the first default would always
work as expected. But in production, where the model classes are only loaded once, the date will shortly become incorrect.

See active_record_defaults.rb for full documentation.
  
== Installation

  script/plugin install http://svn.viney.net.nz/things/rails/plugins/active_record_defaults
  
== Help

Feel free to email with any problems, suggestions, bugs etc...

  jonathan dot viney @ gmail . com