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Ruby developers like to be clear in their naming of variables, modules, classes, methods, and so on. I believe this comes from the idea that code should need very few inline comments if it is written clearly and descriptively. This descriptive naming strategy, combined with the decidedly non-English origins of Ruby (Japanese) and Rails (Danish), often result in oddly-named creations such as #execute_query_as_logged_in_user_without_transaction_logging (which I just made up), and #validates_numericality_of (which is real).

A newcomer might find these tongue-twisting, hyper-descriptive naming conventions maddening, but most of the time the intent becomes so much clearer as a result, it becomes infectious; in no time you find yourself writing your own 30-letter, borderline-semantically-correct method names and producing highly maintainable, readable, self-documenting code. That doesn’t mean it happens all the time, though…

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What a mess. You have undoubtedly run across these methods sprinkled throughout the Ruby and Rails world. If you’ve been working with Rails for even a short time, you’ve probably read a little about security and attr_accessible. But do you really understand what each of them do and when to use them?
I’m not a fan of whoever made these methods so closely named, especially because they serve very different purposes: two are specific to Rails (or more accurately, ActiveRecord), while the other three are Ruby core methods. When I have a need for any of them, I still have to really think about which one I actually want to use. Often I still have to glance at the rdocs to be reassured my choice is the right one. So let’s dive in and figure out what the heck these are supposed to do, and when to use them.

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