When you use validations in Rails, db column names are used as 'keys' for error messages. This is usually the preferred way to go about it because this maps nicely to the form fields. However, if you use a virtual attribute this may not be the case. For e...

Looks like there is a problem with using the attr_accessor method with datetime form fields http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/8983 In Rails 2.3.2, for me at least, the problem seems to be popping up again. While trying to process a date for credit card v...

You might use the attr_accessible method to create getters and setters for a class that has attributes which don't map directly to corresponding fields in a database. For example let's take the scenario where you are processing a credit card transaction. ...