Getting columns from model

[Paulo Carvalho]

Hello,

I am writing a RoR application that connects to a couchDB database using couchrest_model.

The definition of my model is the following one:

class BdsDataAuthor < CouchRest::Model::Base
property :id, Integer
property :first_name, String
property :last_name, String
end

I would like to be able to get the list of the model columns, e.g., the result of
BdsDataAuthor.columns would be [id, first_name, last_name]

Is it possible? I saw that active_record provides this kind of method (column_names), but since I am not using active_record...

A solution that I tried is to create a method in the model class (it works but its not the "best" solution...):

def getColumns
columns = Array.new
columns << "id"
columns << "first_name"
columns << "last_name"
end

Any idea/suggestion to solve this problem?

Thank you

[Marc Peabody]

I would suspect you could simply call .attributes on your object to achieve what you need.

Worst case scenario, fire up an irb console and do this to see what methods are available to you:
(YOUR_OBJECT.methods - Object.new.methods).sort

Better yet, add this code to your .irbrc file:
class Object def my_methods(include_inherited = false) ignored_methods = include_inherited ? Object.methods : self.class.superclass.instance_methods (self.methods - ignored_methods).sort end alias_method :m, :my_methods end

Now you can just open an irb console and simply type the following to get it:
YOUR_OBJECT.m

This saves me lots of time very often!