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This plugin extends ActiveRecord::Base by allowing database attributes to be “locked” so that they may not be changed by normal save operations. Instead, they will cause a validation error saying that the attribute “is locked” unless the save is performed inside block passed to the “unlock_attributes” method.

You lock attributes simply by listing them as arguments to the class method “lock_attributes” like you would “attr_readonly” or “attr_protected. There are two kinds of ”lock“ – always and optional.

A lock can be “optional” if there is also an attribute of the same name as one of the “locked” attributes ending in “_locked”. If this attribute is true, the attribute is locked, otherwise the attribute is not locked.

Locking gives you greater control over attribute modification. The genesis for locking arose out of the need to have attributes be effectively “readonly” from the perspective of a web application mixed in with others that could change, but where a background process collecting the data from a 3rd-party source needed to be able to change these “readonly” values.

Copyright © 2010-2012 Steve Emmons, released under the MIT license