Ruby on Rails样式：Model＃attr_name？ 方法

Question

My Person model has a vip attribute backed by ActiveRecord, so it's got vip and vip= methods automatically. This attribute was initially a boolean, but needs to change to an integer to allow for several categories of importance/prestige/etc, and since there are already many references to the boolean value, I thought I'd add a method like:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  def vip?
    self.vip >= 10
  end
end

So I could fix existing calls to #vip with calls to #vip? . Is it bad practice, or just confusing to do it like this, with #vip storing the level of importance and vip? checking whether a record is "important enough"? The naming is a little tangled because status is already taken by another column.

Answer 1

I think you're on the right track with renaming the attribute. vip? returns whether the attribute in question exceeds a certain value. Maybe the attribute should be something like credits , points , or reputation ? I think of something like StackOverflow itself in this regard. Users have a cumulative reputation score. Some badges are assigned based simply on this cumulative score. While this is likely a composite score of all the up votes, questions, answers, etc. a user has received, your data might be a simple integer value from which you can base status. vBulletin and other forum software also have this based on the number of posts and other attributes.

Answer 2

A predicate method should return true or false , but you can stablish the condition that you want. Regardless of the method name, I think what you have done is right.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  def vip?
    vip >= 10 # self is unnecesary
  end
end