I'm writing an API and want to be able to pass in the attributes of a model without prefixing them with the name of the model. I wrote this little extension to ActiveRecord in order to make it happen:

module ActiveRecord
  class Base
    def self.filter_attributes(hash)
      hash.stringify_keys.slice(*self.accessible_attributes.to_a)
    end
  end
end

And I use it like this

class IdeaController < ActiveRecord::Base
  def create
    @idea = Idea.create(Idea.filter_parameters(params))
    respond_with @idea
  end
end

I have two questions:

1. What do you think about the name of the method? Filter Parameters seemed to make sense, but it's a little generic.

2. Are there uses of this that I'm not thinking of and that would cause problems? For example, passing in nested attributes may not work.

Thanks!

I'm writing an API and want to be able to pass in the attributes of a model without prefixing them with the name of the model. 

I wrote this little extension to ActiveRecord in order to make it happen:

module ActiveRecord
  class Base
    def self.filter_attributes(hash)
      hash.stringify_keys.slice(*self.accessible_attributes.to_a)
    end
  end
end

And I use it like this:

class IdeaController < ActiveRecord::Base
  def create
    @idea = Idea.create(Idea.filter_parameters(params))
    respond_with @idea
  end
end

I have two questions:

1. What do you think about the name of the method? filter_parameters() seemed to make sense, but it's a little generic.

2. Are there uses of this that I'm not thinking of and that would cause problems, such as passing in nested attributes?

I'm writing an API and want to be able to pass in the attributes of a model without prefixing them with the name of the model. I wrote this little extension to ActiveRecord in order to make it happen:

module ActiveRecord
  class Base
    def self.filter_attributes(hash)
      hash.stringify_keys.slice(*self.accessible_attributes.to_a)
    end
  end
end

And I use it like this

class IdeaController < ActiveRecord::Base
  def create
    @idea = Idea.create(Idea.filter_parameters(params))
    respond_with @idea
  end
end

I have two questions:

1. What do you think about the name of the method? Filter Parameters seemed to make sense, but it's a little generic.

2. Are their uses of this that I'm not thinking of and that would cause problems? For example, passing in nested attributes may not work.

Thanks!

I'm writing an API and want to be able to pass in the attributes of a model without prefixing them with the name of the model. I wrote this little extension to ActiveRecord in order to make it happen:

module ActiveRecord
  class Base
    def self.filter_attributes(hash)
      hash.stringify_keys.slice(*self.accessible_attributes.to_a)
    end
  end
end

And I use it like this

class IdeaController < ActiveRecord::Base
  def create
    @idea = Idea.create(Idea.filter_parameters(params))
    respond_with @idea
  end
end

I have two questions:

1. What do you think about the name of the method? Filter Parameters seemed to make sense, but it's a little generic.

2. Are there uses of this that I'm not thinking of and that would cause problems? For example, passing in nested attributes may not work.

Thanks!