# How do you initialize subclasses of ActiveRecord?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-initialize-subclasses-of-activerecord/90185>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [March 26, 2007, 6:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-initialize-subclasses-of-activerecord/90185 "2007-03-26T18:26:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Yajiv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/ec9cab/32.png) [@Yajiv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Yajiv)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 6:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-initialize-subclasses-of-activerecord/90185/1 "2007-03-26T18:26:01Z")

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Having a class

class Recipe \< ActiveRecord

def initialize  
super()  
@someingredients =[“salt”]  
end

end

It appears that

Recipe.find(:all)

returns recipes who haven’t been ‘initialized’

How do you setup a suitable initial state when using these finders?

Best,

Y

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Yajiv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/ec9cab/32.png) [@Yajiv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Yajiv)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 8:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-initialize-subclasses-of-activerecord/90185/2 "2007-03-26T20:31:20Z")

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On Mar 26, 12:26 pm, Yajiv [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> It appears that
> 
> Recipe.find(:all)
> 
> returns recipes who haven’t been ‘initialized’
> 
> How do you setup a suitable initial state when using these finders?

ActiveRecord uses allocate instead of initialize when you find a  
records from the database. It does this for performance reasons and  
also for data integrity.

Please see  
[http://gr-ruby.org/2006/1/18/activerecord-instantiation-magic](http://gr-ruby.org/2006/1/18/activerecord-instantiation-magic)

Zach