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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-03T01:23:55+00:00

I am making a Ruby on Rails app and am having trouble setting some

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I am making a Ruby on Rails app and am having trouble setting some attributes of my model. The problem is that I have a :before_save method, yet for some reason the encrypted_password and salt aren’t getting saved to the database. Here’s the model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessor :password
  attr_accessible :username, :email, :password

  before_save :encrypt_password

  ...

  private
      def encrypt_password
        logger.debug "Got to encrypt_password 1"
        logger.debug "encrypted_password is #{ @encrypted_password }"

        if @encrypted_password != nil and @encrypted_password != ""
          return # @encrypted_password was already set
        end

        logger.debug "Got to encrypt_password 2"
        @salt = make_salt if new_record?
        logger.debug "New salt = #{ @salt }"
        @encrypted_password = encrypt(@password)
        logger.debug "New encrypted_password = #{ @encrypted_password }"
        @password = "(encrypted)"
        logger.debug "Got to encrypt_password 3"
      end

In the log file, I see the following:

    Started POST "/users" for 127.0.0.1 at Wed May 02 22:55:20 -0500 2012
    Processing by UsersController#create as HTML
      Parameters: {"commit"=>"Submit", "authenticity_token"=>"RY9fSMqb2+tdQ0fIjiEz8cfMTWTi012vCWdCvbxACLk=", "utf8"=>"\342\234\223", "user"=>{"username"=>"test6", "password"=>"[FILTERED]", "email"=>"test6@gmail.com"}}
      [1m[36m (0.1ms)[0m  [1mbegin transaction[0m
      [1m[35mUser Exists (0.2ms)[0m  SELECT 1 FROM "users" WHERE LOWER("users"."email") = LOWER('test6@gmail.com') LIMIT 1
    Got to encrypt_password 1
    encrypted_password is 
    Got to encrypt_password 2
    New salt = 4f3464029393829aa562e533773f668c8471c51231611f6f214e654275f37184
    New encrypted_password = 0dafcff2fe75bb6f2b53afda79789cfe13bd3f733b817a0e2e30df98af5829bc
    Got to encrypt_password 3
      [1m[36mSQL (0.5ms)[0m  [1mINSERT INTO "users" ("created_at", "email", "encrypted_password", "is_done", "last_seen", "salt", "updated_at", "username") VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)[0m  [["created_at", Thu, 03 May 2012 03:55:20 UTC +00:00], ["email", "test6@gmail.com"], ["encrypted_password", nil], ["is_done", false], ["last_seen", nil], ["salt", nil], ["updated_at", Thu, 03 May 2012 03:55:20 UTC +00:00], ["username", "test6"]]
      [1m[35m (0.7ms)[0m  commit transaction
    Redirected to http://localhost:3000/
    Completed 302 Found in 7ms (ActiveRecord: 1.4ms)

So it’s definitely making the salt and the encrypted password. Yet the database isn’t getting updated?!

>> User.find(6)
=> #<User id: 6, username: "test6", email: "test6@gmail.com", encrypted_password: nil, is_done: false, salt: nil, last_seen: nil, created_at: "2012-05-03 03:55:20", updated_at: "2012-05-03 03:55:20">
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Try using self.encrypted_password.

    ActiveRecord makes getter/setter methods for your attributes, i.e.

    def encrypted_password
    ...
    # return something from the db
end

def encrypted_password=(x)
    ...
    # set something in the db to x
end

    And when you write @encrypted_password, you’re not actually using these methods, so the database doesn’t get updated.

    You can see this in your log:

    [1m[36mSQL (0.5ms)[0m [1mINSERT INTO "users" ("created_at", "email", "encrypted_password", "is_done", "last_seen", "salt", "updated_at", "username") VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)[0m [["created_at", Thu, 03 May 2012 03:55:20 UTC +00:00], ["email", "test6@gmail.com"], ["encrypted_password", nil], ["is_done", false], ["last_seen", nil], ["salt", nil], ["updated_at", Thu, 03 May 2012 03:55:20 UTC +00:00], ["username", "test6"]]

    salt and encrpyed_password is being set to nil, because you didn’t update the attribute, you updated a class member variable.

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