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after_initialize callback included from a module isn't fired

#5448

In Rails 2.3, it was possible to define an after_initialize callback in a module that was included into a model class:

module UserCallbacks
  def after_initialize
    puts "after_initialize"
  end
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  include UserCallbacks
end

The method was called as expected when creating a new instance of the model.

However, in Rails 3 (RC2) this doesn't happen. It's not very conducive to DRYing up my models that have common behavior.

Reported by Pete Deffendol · August 24th, 2010 @ 06:25 PM

Activity

Pete Deffendol
After some experimentation, the following produces the desired result, although I still do not know why the original sample would fail:
```
module Common
  class Callbacks
    def self.after_initialize(record)
      puts "after_initialize"
    end
  end
  
  def self.included(base)
    base.instance_eval do
      after_initialize Callbacks
    end
  end
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Common
end
```
I was under the impression, that "for performance reasons," only the explicit definition of "after_initialize" was allowed. The above use of the callback class seems to contradict that. Perhaps I am reading the documentation incorrectly? (http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_validations_callbac...)
August 24th, 2010 @ 09:05 PM
José Valim
- State changed from new to wontfix
- Importance changed from to Low
In Rails 3, calling methods with the same name as the callback was deprecated. That said, you need to something like this:
```
module UserCallbacks
  def self.included(base)
    base.after_initializer :some_method
  end
  def some_method
    #
  end
 end
```
August 25th, 2010 @ 02:54 AM
Pete Deffendol
That's good to know, however, it looks like the documentation needs to be updated. Looking at http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activerecord/lib/active_r... the part about an explicit implementation is misleading if not plain wrong.

August 25th, 2010 @ 05:49 PM
Rohit Arondekar
Pete, if you would like to do it, the API Docs and the Guides can be edited here http://github.com/lifo/docrails You'll have to ask lifo (on Github) for write permissions and then you can edit the docs. The changes will be merged with the main Rails repo later on.

August 26th, 2010 @ 01:34 AM