# Making those fancy advanced methods

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/making-those-fancy-advanced-methods/128350>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 6, 2008, 11:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/making-those-fancy-advanced-methods/128350 "2008-02-06T23:29:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![galeal](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@galeal](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/galeal)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2008, 11:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/making-those-fancy-advanced-methods/128350/1 "2008-02-06T23:29:02Z")

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How do you write a method thats similar to find\_by\_username, I want to  
write a method that works dynamically like that, but I have no idea  
where to begin…

Do you declare the method differently? How do you access the part of the  
method header you want, i.e. username?

TIA  
Luke

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![galeal](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@galeal](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/galeal)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2008, 11:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/making-those-fancy-advanced-methods/128350/2 "2008-02-06T23:33:14Z")

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Take a look at method\_missing, and specifically how ActiveRecord::Base  
implements it in the Rails codebase.

method\_missing is the method called when a method is…er…missing. 🙂  
For example:

def method\_missing(meth)  
puts “Called #{meth}, which was missing…”  
raise NoMethodError  
end

Playing with that in a class should get you started.

–Jeremy

On Feb 6, 2008 5:29 PM, Luke G.  
[removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> –  
> Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/).
> 
> >

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