Rails 6.1 adds *_previously_was attribute methods

Rails 6.1 adds *_previously_was attribute methods for dirty tracking the previous attribute value after the model is saved or reset. *_previously_was returns the previous attribute value that was changed before the model was saved

Before Rails 6.1, to retrieve the previous attribute value, we used *_previous_change or previous_changes.

Here is how it can be used.

Rails 6.0.0

1>> user = User.new
2=> #<User id: nil, name: nil, email: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>
3
4>> user.name = "Sam"
5
6# *_was returns the original value. In this example, the name was initially nil.
7>> user.name_was
8=> nil
9>> user.save!
10
11# After save, the original value is set to "Sam". To retrieve the
12# previous value, we had to use `previous_changes`.
13>> user.previous_changes[:name]
14=> [nil, "Sam"]
Copy

Rails 6.1.0

1>> user = User.find_by(name: "Sam")
2=> #<User id: 1, name: "Sam", email: nil, created_at: "2019-10-14 17:53:06", updated_at: "2019-10-14 17:53:06">
3
4>> user.name = "Nick"
5>> user.name_was
6=> "Sam"
7
8>> user.save!
9
10>> user.previous_changes[:name]
11=> ["Sam", "Nick"]
12
13# *_previously_was returns the previous value.
14>> user.name_previously_was
15=> "Sam"
16
17# After reload, all the dirty tracking
18# attributes is reset.
19>> user.reload
20>> user.name_previously_was
21=> nil
Copy

Check out the pull request for more details on this.