Accessing a RoR ActiveRecord's attributes from within the ActiveRecord instance

I am confused about how to access the attributes of an ActiveRecord instance from a method within the ActiveRecord instance.

For example I have a Lead class that inherits from ActiveRecord:

class Lead < ActiveRecord::Base
end

I have the following scaled down migration file that shows the columns of an ActiveRecord table:

class CreateLeads < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :leads do |t|
      t.string :phone_1
      t.string :phone_2
      t.string :web
      t.string :fax
      t.timestamps
    end
  end
  def self.down
    drop_table :leads
  end
end

I am using send in a method of the Lead class to set these attributes internally like thi开发者_StackOverflows:

def instance_method(prop)
  self.send("#{prop}=".to_sym, value_node.text) 
end

The question I have is how do I access these :phone_1, :phone_2 attributes when within the ActiveRecord instance itself without having to use send which is the only way I can think of. I think these attributes are accessed via method_missing when accessing them from the public interface like this:

puts lead.phone_1

But I have no idea how to access them from within the ActiveRecord instance apart from via send.

Is it possible?

You can reference AR attributes directly from within any AR instance. No need for any 'send' magic:

def some_method
 self.some_attribute='value' # with or without self
 x = some_attribute
end

What lead you to believe otherwise?

If you need to bypass AR's built in accessors you can use read_attribute and write_attribute.

You can just use self.phone1 or self.phone2/ For example:

class Lead < ActiveRecord::Base

  def some_instance_method
    self.phone1 = '1234567'
    self.phone2 = self.phone1
  end

end