Rails 6 deprecates update_attributes and update_attributes!

ActiveRecord#update and ActiveRecord#update! were added as aliases for update_attributes and update_attributes! in Rails 4 This soft deprecation was added to align with other Active Record methods like create and provide better semantics when a resource is being updated. Using update_attributes didn’t give any deprecation warning until Rails 5.2.

Rails 6 deprecates update_attributes and update_attributes! in favour of update and update! and we can now see deprecation warning when invoked.

Before Rails 6

> article.update_attributes(title: 'New title')
   (0.1ms)  begin transaction
  SQL (2.5ms)  UPDATE "articles" SET "title" = ?, "updated_at" = ? WHERE "articles"."id" = ?  [["title", "New title"], ["updated_at", "2019-05-11 11:51:39.870316"], ["id", 1]]
   (1.1ms)  commit transaction
 => true

In Rails 6

> article.update_attributes(title: 'New title')
DEPRECATION WARNING: update_attributes is deprecated and will be removed from Rails 6.1 (please, use update instead)
   (0.1ms)  begin transaction
  Article Update (2.7ms)  UPDATE "articles" SET "title" = ?, "updated_at" = ? WHERE "articles"."id" = ?  [["title", "New title"], ["updated_at", "2019-05-11 11:32:48.075786"], ["id", 1]]
   (1.1ms)  commit transaction
 => true

Removing these methods will break code in many gems as a lot of developers have used update_attributes over update. With this deprecation warning, everyone can start using the preferred way of updating record i.e. update. The methods update_attributes and update_attributes! will be removed entirely in the next version, Rails 6.1.