每个可用的方法都有几个问题，但我认为定义一个after_initialize回调是正确的方法，原因如下:

default_scope will initialize values for new models, but then that will become the scope on which you find the model. If you just want to initialize some numbers to 0 then this is not what you want. Defining defaults in your migration also works part of the time... As has already been mentioned this will not work when you just call Model.new. Overriding initialize can work, but don't forget to call super! Using a plugin like phusion's is getting a bit ridiculous. This is ruby, do we really need a plugin just to initialize some default values? Overriding after_initialize is deprecated as of Rails 3. When I override after_initialize in rails 3.0.3 I get the following warning in the console:

弃用警告:Base#after_initialize已弃用，请使用Base。After_initialize:方法代替。(调用from /Users/me/myapp/app/models/my_model:15)

因此，我要说的是写一个after_initialize回调函数，它允许你在关联上设置默认属性，就像这样:

  class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_one :address
    after_initialize :init

    def init
      self.number  ||= 0.0           #will set the default value only if it's nil
      self.address ||= build_address #let's you set a default association
    end
  end    

现在您只有一个地方可以寻找模型的初始化。我一直在用这个方法，直到有人提出更好的方法。

警告:

For boolean fields do: self.bool_field = true if self.bool_field.nil? See Paul Russell's comment on this answer for more details If you're only selecting a subset of columns for a model (ie; using select in a query like Person.select(:firstname, :lastname).all) you will get a MissingAttributeError if your init method accesses a column that hasn't been included in the select clause. You can guard against this case like so: self.number ||= 0.0 if self.has_attribute? :number and for a boolean column... self.bool_field = true if (self.has_attribute? :bool_value) && self.bool_field.nil? Also note that the syntax is different prior to Rails 3.2 (see Cliff Darling's comment below)

可以通过简单地执行以下操作来改进after_initialize回调模式

after_initialize :some_method_goes_here, :if => :new_record?

如果您的init代码需要处理关联，那么这就有一个非常重要的好处，因为如果您读取初始记录而不包括关联记录，那么下面的代码将触发一个微妙的n+1。

class Account

  has_one :config
  after_initialize :init_config

  def init_config
    self.config ||= build_config
  end

end

尽管在大多数情况下这样设置默认值会令人困惑和尴尬，但您也可以使用:default_scope。点击这里查看squil的评论。

Phusion有一些很好的插件。

来自api文档http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Callbacks.html 在模型中使用before_validation方法，它为创建和更新调用提供了创建特定初始化的选项 例如，在这个例子中(同样摘自API文档的例子)，数字字段被初始化为信用卡。您可以轻松地对其进行调整，以设置您想要的任何值

class CreditCard < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Strip everything but digits, so the user can specify "555 234 34" or
  # "5552-3434" or both will mean "55523434"
  before_validation(:on => :create) do
    self.number = number.gsub(%r[^0-9]/, "") if attribute_present?("number")
  end
end

class Subscription < ActiveRecord::Base
  before_create :record_signup

  private
    def record_signup
      self.signed_up_on = Date.today
    end
end

class Firm < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Destroys the associated clients and people when the firm is destroyed
  before_destroy { |record| Person.destroy_all "firm_id = #{record.id}"   }
  before_destroy { |record| Client.destroy_all "client_of = #{record.id}" }
end

令人惊讶的是，这里没有提到他

伙计们，我最后做了以下事情:

def after_initialize 
 self.extras||={}
 self.other_stuff||="This stuff"
end

效果好极了!