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?