Question

Here’s my code example:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  belongs_to :account

  after_initialize :setup_account

  def setup_account
    self.account = Account.new
  end

  def email=(email)
    self.account.email = email
    super(email)
  end

end

Now, the following call is failing:

User.new(email: '[e-mail]')

Because this is executing the email= method before the setup_account method, where the account variable would be set.

How would you change this code to work as expected? I know the copying of email is a bad thing to do, but it could have been something else instead of a simple copy.

Answer 1

You can use the following. It doesn’t use any callbacks, but lazily creates an account or returns an existing one.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :account, autosave: true

  # ...

  def user_account
    self.account ||= Account.new
  end

  def email=(email)
    user_account.email = email
    super
  end
end

You also need to specify that you want to autosave the account association when you save the user object. Otherwise you would have to do it manually when updating an user record.