title: Is there a way to make Rails ActiveRecord attributes private?
body: <p>By default, ActiveRecord takes all fields from the corresponding database table and creates public attributes for all of them.</p>
  
  <p>I think that it's reasonable <em>not</em> to make all attributes in a model public. Even more, exposing attributes that are meant for internal use clutters the model's interface and violates the encapsulation principle.</p>
  
  <p>So, is there a way to make some of the attributes literally <code>private</code>? </p>
  
  <p>Or, maybe I should move on to some other ORM?</p>