# Can you override a private rails method?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-you-override-a-private-rails-method/49422>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [December 4, 2005, 3:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-you-override-a-private-rails-method/49422 "2005-12-04T03:43:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![joshuabates](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/c4cdca/32.png) [@joshuabates](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joshuabates)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 3:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-you-override-a-private-rails-method/49422/1 "2005-12-04T03:43:41Z")

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I’m trying to override the behavior of find\_with\_associations for an  
acts\_as  
plugin.

Not having much luck as it’s a private method, so I can’t alias it, and  
my  
method  
of the same name is ignored.

Is this even possible?

joshua

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![joshuabates](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/c4cdca/32.png) [@joshuabates](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joshuabates)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 4:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-you-override-a-private-rails-method/49422/2 "2005-12-04T04:28:09Z")

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In the ruby example below, it looks like you can override a private  
function. Can you post code?

-Peter

class A  
private  
def foo  
“foo”  
end  
end

class A  
private  
def foo  
“foofoo”  
end

public  
def bar  
foo  
end  
end

a = A.new  
puts a.bar # outputs “foofoo”

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![joshuabates](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/c4cdca/32.png) [@joshuabates](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joshuabates)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 5:20am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-you-override-a-private-rails-method/49422/3 "2005-12-04T05:20:41Z")

</div>

In the process of grabbing my code to post, I solved it!!!

I had to include the methods straight into ActiveRecord::Base not into  
ActiveRecord::Associations

eg  
ActiveRecord::Base.send :include,  
Democracy::Acts::Multilingual::Associations

I was worried that it just wasn’t possible, because doing something as  
simple as this doesn’t work

module ActiveRecord  
module Associations  
private  
def association\_join(\*args)  
breakpoint  
super  
end  
end  
end