ActiveRecord override

Rails
1

Would really appreciate it if someone could tell me why this is
happening:

I override ssn method of AR class so I can encrypt/decrypt to/from the
db:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
def ssn=(value)
write_attribute(:borrower_ssn, Crypto.encrypt(self.encryption_key,
value))
write_attribute(:borrower_ssn_final_four, value[5,4])
end

def ssn
# this begin - rescue can be removed once all data is encrypted
begin
return Crypto.decrypt(self.encryption_key,
read_attribute(:borrower_ssn)) if read_attribute(:borrower_ssn) &&
self.encryption_key
rescue
return read_attribute(:borrower_ssn) if
read_attribute(:borrower_ssn)
&& self.encryption_key
end
nil
end
end

However, when I do Person.find(27) I get:

#<Person id: 27, ssn: “l+IV+c55qywTjPd+bW+IGA==\n” >

And then if I do p = Person.find(27), then I get the decrypted ssn.

I know that find must be processing under the override methods, but I
dont
understand why, as I thought if you overrode a method it would hold in
all
situations for the AR object.

David

2

On Jul 19, 9:11 pm, David K. [email protected] wrote:

However, when I do Person.find(27) I get:

#<Person id: 27, ssn: “l+IV+c55qywTjPd+bW+IGA==\n” >

And then if I do p = Person.find(27), then I get the decrypted ssn.

I know that find must be processing under the override methods, but I dont
understand why, as I thought if you overrode a method it would hold in all
situations for the AR object.

inspect ( which is how objects are displayed by the console ) uses
read_attribute when building up its representation of the object

Fred

3

Ps rails 2.3.5 ruby 1.8.7

On 7/19/10, David K. [email protected] wrote:

nil

understand why, as I thought if you overrode a method it would hold in all
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.

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Sent from my mobile device

4

Thanks Frederick… I see what you are saying. So I learned something
new,
and it turns out the actual issue was that I forgot to run the migration
where I munged cleartext in to encrypted.