Question

Currenntly, my application is designed using Devise for authentication. I have it so when the first user signs up, an account is created in an Accounts table and the account_id is passed to the User table. I also have it set so that each time a new account is created that user is tagged as an admin. Finally, I have it working where the admin can create new users.

My problem is that at the time the new users are created I need to have these users be assigned the same account_id as the admin to tie the users together. I can do this if I add an account_id field on the form and have the admin manually enter it. What I want to have is that this is automated in the background.

I tried many varieties without success. This is one of the unsuccesful attempts where I put the following in the user.rb

before_save :add_account_id_from_parent     

   def add_account_id_from_parent       
    return true unless self.users.present?       
    self.users.update_attribute(:account_id, 1)    
   end

I used the number “1” just to see if I could get anything automated and placed in that field.

Like I said manually everything works, but I want it so the acocunt_id is automatically added during sign up based on the admins account_id.

Answer 1

I’m a bit confused why you are calling self.users. If I understand correctly, you want to assign account_id to 1 after a new user is created (as a test). You can do that like this:

before_save :add_account_id_from_parent

def add_account_id_from_parent
  self.account_id = 1
end

You don’t need to actually update the record since this is assigned before save, and save will write the new value to the db.

Again I might be missing something, if so please clarify.

UPDATE:

If you’re validating that account is present, you’ll need to change the callback to a before_validation instead of before_save, like so:

before_validation :add_account_id_from_parent