Can you check whether methods exist before creating them?

[collectiveidea]

Can you check whether methods exist before creating them?

[ktheory]

Hi Pupeno,

It may be difficult or impossible to change acts_as_audited to do this.

AFAIK, here's the order how methods are defined on ActiveRecord classes:

1. The class is interpreted. Any methods defined using "def my_method" are added to the class. As modules are included, their methods are added to the class.
2. When the interpreter reaches the acts_as_audited line, it includes the appropriate modules, which define some methods.
3. After the class is loaded, ActiveRecord inspects the database schema, and defines accessor methods for attributes.

So even if acts_as_audited checked if methods were already defined, it wouldn't prevent the case where ActiveRecord later tries to define methods based on the database schema.

[pupeno]

I see, I haven't realize that... mmhh... it seems like Rails should check whether the methods exist then. That's not likely to happen :/

Maybe checking if the method exists and checking the schema would do it, but I'm not even sure if that's possible.

[rewritten]

Late comment, but anyway... One could do with some code to remap generated method names like
acts_as_audited :methods => {:versions => :audit_versions}

this way a user who knows that some name will clash can preemptively change it.

[laserlemon]

@pupeno, we're cleaning up some of our stale issues. Is this still an issue for you? Thank you!