Different Ways to Set Attributes in ActiveRecord (Rails 6)

In 2014, David Verhasselt wrote an excellent blogpost on the various methods ActiveRecord provides us to update records, how they differ, and their unique side-effects.

I’ve referenced it many times over the years when reading codebases, and determining the best way to update a particular attribute.

In this post, I’d like to bring his blogpost up-to-date for Rails 6.

Cheat Sheet

Method	Default Accessor	Saved to DB	Validations	Callbacks	Touches `updated_at`	Readonly check
`attribute(s)=`	Yes	No	-	-	-	-
`write_attribute`	No	No	-	-	-	-
`assign_attributes`	Yes	No	-	-	-	-
`update_attribute`	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
`update_attributes`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
`update`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
`update_column(s)`	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
`User::update`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
`User::update_all`	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
`User::insert(_all)`	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
`User::upsert(_all)`	No	Yes	No	No	No	No

As of Rails 6, update_attributes has been deprecated in favour of update.